Men in the Eye - The Barclays...

azzuri · Men in the Eye - The Barclays...

Private Eye No. 1110, 9 July - 22 July 2004

MEN IN THE EYE - THE BARCLAYS

HACKS at the Telegraph whooped with delight when news arrived that they had been sold to the Barclay twins. An understandable reaction, given that they would otherwise have been delivered into the custody of the dour and dreadful David "Rommel" Montgomery. Even so, industry secretary Patricia Hewitt might wish to pause a moment before obeying the hacks' plea that she should let the deal through without a referral to the media regulator Ofcom.

As guardian of the public interest, Hewitt can ask Ofcom to consider whether the new owners will ensure "accurate presentation of news" and "free presentation of opinion". There are many reasons to think they won't.

Allowing the Barclay twins to control the Telegraph titles is like hiring a militant temperance campaigner to run an off-licence, since they are fiercely hostile to the main function of journalism - disclosure.

In Eye 1108 we revealed Sir David Barclay's reaction to a tiny diary item in the London Evening Standard noting that he was not in the best of health. This information had been put in the public domain by Sir David himself, in February this year, as an excuse for not testifying before the Delaware judge Leo Strine. Yet when the Evening Standard alluded to it three months later, Barclay's solicitors fired off a fusillade of threatening letters - not only to the Standard but also to its sister papers the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, demanding a corporate undertaking that they would never again repeat this "clear invasion of Sir David's privacy".

Now the same solicitors, Lovells, have swung into action again to protest at a profile that appeared in the Standard on 23 June. The piece began with the prediction that "the Barclay brothers may not appreciate this article", and so it proved. Sir David and Sir Frederick immediately demanded - got - an apology for the suggestion that they were separated from their wives, although this has been asserted in dozens of articles down the years without a single denial until now. Meanwhile Sir David's son Aidan Barclay - chairman-presumptive of the Telegraph group - is warning the Standard never again to mention that he has a house in London, even though no detail of the address or postal district was given. According to Aidan's lawyers it is a scandalous invasion of his privacy even to mention the name of a city where he owns a property.

We have been here before. Eight years ago the Barclay brothers took legal action under French privacy laws against the Observer (which is available at a few Paris news-stands) over an article by John Sweeney. They claimed Sweeney had "infringed their privacy" and exposed them to the risk of "kidnapping, deprivation of freedom and terrorist attacks" by mentioning the well-known fact that they had a residence in the tax haven of Monaco. Even more ludicrously, they also objected to the disclosure that they were "born within minutes of each other on 17 October 1934". Happily, the Tribunal de Grande Instance threw the case out and ordered the Barclays to pay the Observer 20,000 francs in costs and damages.

One of the most startling aspects of the French case was the Barclays' claim that a drawing which illustrated the article - a caricature of the brothers - breached their "absolute right to their own image". This must be bad news for Nicholas Garland and other Telegraph cartoonists, who infringe the "absolute right" of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown etc to their own image pretty well every day.

In short the Barclays demand privileges for themselves which their newspapers don't grant to others. But will the Telegraph titles now be obliged to grant this special protection to friends and associates of the twins as well? A statement by the Barclays, printed on the Daily Telegraph's front page two weeks ago, insisted that "we have no interest in interfering with the editorial policy of the titles", and most media commentators say that their record at the Scotsman confirms this.

Tim Luckhurst, a former deputy editor and editor of the Scotsman, disagrees. Writing in the Independent, he pointed out that after the Barclays bought the paper its editorial stance became "promarket where once it was broadly social democratic, Eurosceptic where previously it was Europhile, and sceptical about the value of devolution when, traditionally, it was the leading standard-bearer for home rule". These and other changes are usually attributed to Andrew "Brillo Pad" Neill, the twins' absurdly-coiffured Scottish gauleiter; but according to Luckhurst "it was made abundantly clear that the editorial instructions conveyed by the publisher were those of the proprietors".

The bashful Barclays weren't shy of making their other prejudices known. Luckhurst recalls that they became "furious" if the Scotsman ever published a critical word about the royal family or their dear friend Margaret Thatcher, and showed intense "proprietorial interest" in any coverage of the retail tycoon Philip Green, an old churn and business associate. Since Green - who is currently trying to buy Marks & Spencer - now appears in the City pages every day, Telegraph business hacks had better watch their backs.

Will Ofcom be given the chance at least to consider if the Barclays are fit and proper people to own a national newspaper? If so, another piece of evidence the regulators should consult is the verdict handed down by Judge Leo Strine in Delaware four months ago. Although his criticisms of Conrad Black hogged the headlines, he didn't spare the Barclay boys either. "The Barclays knew that they were concealing... extremely important information," he declared. "They were aware of Black's obligations to [Hollinger] International and his infidelity, yet remained silent while he misled the International board... In public filings in the United States and Canada, the Barclays have released information that is of questionable accuracy."

Strine concluded that "it is difficult for me to give as much credit to the Barclays' factual arguments as they would like". Not exactly a ringing endorsement of men who now look set to own one of Britain's most venerable national newspapers. As the Torygraph's nonagenarian cub reporter Bill Deedes might ask: shome mishtake, shurely?

PS: Dominic Lawson has been tipped to edit the Daily Telegraph ever since Sir David Barclay praised him (in a rare interview earlier this year) as "a very good editor". But suggestions that Lawson has been striving to ingratiate himself with the twins are wide of the mark, according to Prof Roy Greenslade of the Grauniad.

"My understanding," Greenslade wrote last week, "is that Lawson has not only never met either of the Barclay brothers but he has also never spoken to them". True, but scarcely the whole truth. As both Lawson and Greenslade are well aware, the man in day-to-day charge of the newspaper group will be Aidan Barclay, whom Lawson certainly does know. Aidan's wife Ferzana - nicknamed "Fizzy" - is a good friend of the Hon Rosa Monckton, aka Mrs Dominic Lawson.

PPS: The Barclay twins have no greater champion in the Street of Shame than Observer business editor Frank Kane, who recently recalled his outrage when the Delaware judge Leo Strine "blackened the name of Sir David Barclay, who was accused of feigning illness to avoid appearing in court, a gross defamation". Kane demanded that Strine should "retract the slur" forthwith. When the Barclays won the Torygraph auction, Kane treated his readers to another long feature.

"Throughout the entire course of the negotiations to take over the Telegraph, the Barclays kept up a regular correspondence with this newspaper," he boasted on 27 June. "The letters belie the image of the Barclays as reclusive and secretive tycoons manipulating events from their Channel Islands fortress, which is how many have sought to portray them."

The Barclays are indeed secretive tycoons who inhabit a Channels Island fortress, but Frank Kane would never dare say so. When he was news editor of their Sunday Business newspaper five years ago, the Barclays underwrote hospital treatment for his young son who had meningitis, and since Kane moved to the Observer they have continued to pay for his boy's treatment. This is all very much to the Barclay brothers' credit, but mightn't Observer editor Roger Alton feel that this disqualifies his business editor from providing impartial coverage of the contest for the Telegraph?

source - www.private-eye.co.uk

neil8r · Re: Men in the Eye - The Barclays...

Men in the Eye - The Barclays...

Re: Men in the Eye - The Barclays...