The Daily Novel

Journalists mostly enter their trade with a notion that their job is to tell the truth to their readers. The people who own the newspapers do not always share the same imperatives. So it has been with many newspaper proprietors in history, notably Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, whose family still controls the Daily Mail, which Harmsworth founded in 1896.

Conrad Black shared, and still shares, the imperatives of the newspaper proprietors. Like Harmsworth, but also similar to Lord Beaverbrook, who like Black came to make his fortune in England, after a less than brilliant career in his native Canada. He succeeded brilliantly, winning control of the Daily Telegraph, the most consistently rightwing of the British serious newspapers, but one which prided itself on keeping its news columns strictly non-partizan.

Black’s own political views were so far right, that he might have been deemed as mad, in 21^st century Britain. Because he was also a curiously old fashioned figure, trying to be a British gentleman, he did not dictate to his journalists what they should write in the Daily Telegraph. When he differed from the opinions of his editors, whose mortgages he was paying, he did not order them to change their copy. He wrote letters to the editor of his own newspapers expressing his views. Of which the competitors of the Daily Telegraph made much fun.

Today Conrad Black faces the prospect of twenty years in jail. He won’t know until November, which is the kind of torture I would not want to inflict on any man in his sixties, even if he had done even nastier things than Black.

So before I sat down to write this blog, I did my research. Who was it who gave the right wing loony Black what he most coveted, a peerage of the British realm? Was it Margaret Thatcher, whose political views were quite close to those of Black? Was it John Major, who was much more moderate, but still a right of centre conservative? The answer is that it was Tony Blair, the leader of new Labour, who gave it to him in 2001, despite vigorous opposition from the Canadian prime minister.

So this blog, although its main subject is Conrad Black, looks at the central issue of current British politics. Is the government of Gordon Brown going to give us something different? Or is it going to follow slavishly New Labour Blair style. Which was quite prepared to toady up to right wing proprietors like Rupert Murdoch. None of us know yet. So let’s continue with the Conrad Black story.

The man who delivered the Daily Telepraph to Conrad Black was the chief executive of the Telegraph at the time, who I happen to have known since he first entered financial journalism on my old newspaper. Then he was employed by the Lawson family, who had made the Telegraph into the fine newspaper it was in my lifetime. Right-wing, but totally dedicated to separating news from comment, and printing the news at length. Because compression of complexities leads to distortion.

But my old friend, Andrew Knight, realised that the Daily Telepraph was in financial peril, because the number of people prepared to pay for decent news coverage was dwindling year by year. So on his own iniative he used a visit to Canada to persuade Black to buy the Telegraph. Shortly after Black took over, Knight jumped ship, and accepted a job as chief exec of Murdoch UK. Which added a few more millions to his own personal bank account.

That was a few years ago. Now, when I meet him, he says he is a ‘farmer’. Which means that he no longer does either journalism, or managing journalists; he is enjoying the rather handsome proceeds for doing what he learnt to do, and did for a few years. Which he used to buy a ‘farm’.

But what he was doing was not ‘journalism’ in the sense I understand it.

So let’s get back to today. And is Gordon Brown going to make a difference?

The man who was wheeled in tonight by ITV News, to speak about Black was Andrew Neil, one of Knight’s protégées. He argued that Black should indeed be sent to jail, and that it was a warning to all crooked businessmen, that they should follow the ‘rules’, because the present rules supposedly prevent business like Black from making their own millions at the expense of the public. Neil’s line was that Black had betrayed the shareholders.

Which he did.

But what is far more important from my viewpoint is that he betrayed the readers of the Daily Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph readers, like the readers of Northcliffe’s Daily Mail, were relying on Northcliffe to tell them the truth, as they were able to ascertain it.

This is my perspective on Conrad Black.

Read today’s British press and decide for yourselves whether it is worth considering. Here are the links. The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sun and the Daily Mirror. Are they telling you the ‘truth’? Or am I?