Peter Oborne quits the Telegraph

'There is a purpose to journalism, 
and it is not just to entertain.
It is not to pander to political power, 
big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have a duty to tell their readers the truth'

Tuesday 17 February, 2015 Peter Oborne resigned as the Telegraph's chief political commentator in December because he was unhappy with what was happening at the paper. He had intended to "go quietly" until the non-coverage of the HSBC tax-avoidance story last week stirred him to "go public". 
In an explosive 3,000-word appraisal of the Telegraph under the Barclay twins, published on the Open Democracy website today, Oborne describes cost-cutting, sackings and declining standards.
Errors included describing Prince Edward as the Duke, rather than Earl, of Wessex and confusing deer hunting and deer stalking. The paper's website even, he says, carried a story about a woman with three breasts which an executive said he knew to be false.
With the "collapse in standards" came a more "sinister development", he writes: an erosion of the distinction between editorial and advertising. Stories that cast a negative shadow over big advertisers were suppressed, he suggests - although the Telegraph denies this. 
Oborne cites a series of stories about HSBC, the Tesco accounting scandal and coverage of China and Cunard. Eventually, he says he concluded that something had gone awry with the Telegraph's news judgment, and wrote to the chief executive Murdoch MacLennan, detailing his concerns and handing in his notice. 
It was his intention, he says, to go quietly because he had no desire to damage the paper. Here is the key passage of his piece explaining why he changed his mind:
On Monday of last week, BBC Panorama ran its story about HSBC and its Swiss banking arm, alleging a wide-scale tax evasion scheme, while the Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published their 'HSBC files'. All newspapers realised at once that this was a major event. The FT splashed on it for two days in a row, while the Times and the Mail gave it solid coverage spread over several pages.
You needed a microscope to find the Telegraph coverage: nothing on Monday, six slim paragraphs at the bottom left of page two on Tuesday, seven paragraphs deep in the business pages on Wednesday. TheTelegraph’s reporting only looked up when the story turned into claims that there might be questions about the tax affairs of people connected to the Labour party.
After a lot of agony I have come to the conclusion that I have a duty to make all this public. There are two powerful reasons. The first concerns the future of the Telegraph under the Barclay Brothers. It might sound a pompous thing to say, but I believe the newspaper is a significant part of Britain’s civic architecture. It is the most important public voice of civilised, sceptical conservatism.
Telegraph readers are intelligent, sensible, well-informed people. They buy the newspaper because they feel that they can trust it. If advertising priorities are allowed to determine editorial judgments, how can readers continue to feel this trust? The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible. Imagine if the BBC—so often the object of Telegraph attack—had conducted itself in this way. TheTelegraph would have been contemptuous. It would have insisted that heads should roll, and rightly so.

This brings me to a second and even more important point that bears not just on the fate of one newspaper but on public life as a whole. A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth.
It is not only the Telegraph that is at fault here. The past few years have seen the rise of shadowy executives who determine what truths can and what truths can’t be conveyed across the mainstream media. The criminality of News International newspapers during the phone hacking years was a particularly grotesque example of this wholly malign phenomenon. All the newspaper groups, bar the magnificent exception of the Guardian, maintained a culture of omerta around phone-hacking, even if (like the Telegraph) they had not themselves been involved. One of the consequences of this conspiracy of silence was the appointment of Andy Coulson, who has since been jailed and now faces further charges of perjury, as director of communications in 10 Downing Street.

The Twitter reaction

Peter Oborne's tweet inviting people to read why he had left the Telegraph struck an immediate chord with journalists and the wider public. It was retweeted more than 2,000 times in three hours, and in one hour alone there were 1,325 tweets on the subject. Here is a selection:
The Telegraph response
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Your questions are full of inaccuracies, and we do not therefore intend to respond to them. More generally, like any other business, we never comment on individual commercial relationships, but our policy is absolutely clear. We aim to provide all our commercial partners with a range of advertising solutions, but the distinction between advertising and our award-winning editorial operation has always been fundamental to our business. We utterly refute any allegation to the contrary.
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It is a matter of huge regret that Peter Oborne, for nearly five years a contributor to the Telegraph, should have launched such an astonishing and unfounded attack, full of inaccuracy and innuendo, on his own paper.
...and the readers' comments...
Wow. A hearty 'well done' to you, sir.

An admirable position, and sterling work. Well done.

Of course we all know it goes on and perhaps goes some way to explain why the readership of newspapers continues to decline and people distrust the media in general.

I've rarely agreed with you, but I've always respected you. I respect you even more now.

Your voice & presence at the Telegraph will be sorely missed Peter. Standards have slipped, badly, as you yourself highlight and the paper is fast becoming its own tribute act.

A brave and principled stand against the corrupting forces of those running HSBC. 

Wow. Important, honourable, honest. Huge credit is due to Mr Oborne for writing this, and taking the decisions he has. Many of us have watched the catastrophic decline of the Telegraph, and seen talented friends ejected from it for the crime of having principles. This goes far beyond the Telegraph alone. Hugely important piece of writing.

Mr Oborne you have gone up in my estimation well done a man of principle. I salute you sir

A very illuminating account.However, the cynic in me asks whether this hasn't been going on ina less open way for decades. It is symptomatic of our times that the power elite now see no reason to cover their dirty tricks but act with arrogant impunity.

Thank you for standing up and revealing what many of us have suspected for a long time, and not just about the Telegraph.

Excellent journalism exposing the huge danger to democracy which arises from off-shore ownership or indeed ownership of the press by those who have no interest in the truth or objectivity merely profit. Well done Peter.

Stunning, stunning stuff. A credit to journalism, a credit to Britain.

The Telegraph is bent? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. Yet Oborne is responsible for some of the most sycophantic, obsequious hackery that has ever appeared in British media. One wonders why he has chosen now to restate what most of us already suspected or knew outright.
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