Rows at The Jewish Chronicle show why ownership matters
Opinion
From high-profile resignations at The JC to the impending Daily Telegraph sale, openness on ownership should apply to all our media.
It was the illustrious children’ s author Michael Rosen who made the most telling observation about the spate of high-profile columnists resigning from The Jewish Chronicle, the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.
Rosen said he, too, would like to withdraw from writing for the title. But as he has never been asked to contribute, “I regret I cannot in all honesty withdraw my services”.
However, at least three distinguished journalists who do contribute to the weekly, which has served the nearly 300,000-strong Jewish community in England and Wales for 183 years, have indeed said they will no longer write for The JC, as it is usually known.
The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland posted an open letter announcing his decision — a letter that was reported on X by comedian David Baddiel, who said he, too, had no plans to write columns for the paper. The other known refuseniks are David Aaronovitch, the BBC presenter and former Times writer, and Hadley Freeman, the Sunday Times writer.
It’s complicated
What is going on? Like all matters Jewish in the time of Gaza, it is complicated and ranges from allegations of inaccurate stories about the Gaza crisis and suggestions that The JC has become more right-wing to questions over ownership, control and who is really in charge.
The immediate row is over articles produced by freelance journalist Elon Perry, including a story citing Israeli intelligence sources saying the leader of Hamas planned to smuggle himself out of Israel and taking hostages with him.
According to The Times, Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 found that all “relevant sources” were unfamiliar with the intelligence on which the story was based and questioned other claims from Perry.
The freelancer stands by his stories, but The JC said at the weekend it was not happy with some of Perry’s claims and has removed his work from the website and severed connections with him.
High-profile resignations
Whatever the rights and wrongs about individual stories, it is good to see journalists refusing to work for publications they no longer trust — at least for now.
It happens perhaps too rarely, although there have been high-profile resignations in the past. This includes Peter Oborne’s resignation from The Daily Telegraph over its coverage of one of its top advertisers, HSBC, and Andrew Neil’s resignation as chairman of GB News, whose funders include Sir Paul Marshall.
Coincidently, Neil has also resigned as chairman of The Spectator, when it was bought by Marshall, although Neil had always promised to resign when new owners took over.
As for The JC, there seems to be more to the unrest than the stories of one freelance journalist.
Ownership matters
Four years ago, The JC was bought by a consortium fronted by Sir Robbie Gibb, the controversial former Downing Street director of communications for prime minister Theresa May.
Gibb, a BBC board member, has been accused of interfering in editorial appointments at the Beeb and has been described by former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis as being “an active agent of the Conservative Party” within the BBC. He was also an early editorial advisor on the setting up of GB News.
He says he is the 100% owner of Jewish Chronicle Media, but has declined to say who actually put up the money to fund the purchase.
In his open letter, Freedland argued that there can be no accountability while “The JC is owned by a person or people who refuse to reveal themselves”.
Alan Rusbridger, editor of Prospect magazine and former editor of The Guardian, has described it as “troubling” that the identity of the owners of such a sensitive publication is not publicly known.
Such principles should extend beyond The JC — openness on the identity of owners should apply to all publications and be part of “fit and proper person” conditions for media ownership.
As a multi-millionaire hedge fund owner, Marshall can certainly afford the hefty £100m purchase price of The Spectator on his own but if, as is usual, the financial burden is spread, then such information should be publicly available.
Marshall is also believed to be the frontrunner in the battle for The Daily Telegraph, with a likely purchase price of between £500m and £600m. If he is successful, most probably as the head of a consortium, it is imperative that all of the investors are both known and deemed fit to own a national newspaper.
Politics cloaked in economics
Meanwhile, an elaborate battle for control, if not ownership, of a much larger media organisation is under way in Reno, Nevada.
The court battle over who should ultimately control the $15bn News Corp was supposed to take place in secret and, indeed, Reno was chosen as the legal venue for its supposed secrecy rules.
Happily, someone — possibly even a member of the Murdoch family — leaked the legal documents to The New York Times.
As a result, we now know that Rupert Murdoch is trying to vary the terms of a supposedly “irrevocable” trust to give control to son Lachlan after his death, supposedly because it would be in the financial interests of the other elder Murdoch children.
At the moment, Rupert and four of his children all have one vote each.
The real issue is politics cloaked in economics — with the argument that Lachlan will keep the likes of Fox News and The Sun right-wing, while the other three (Prudence, James and Elisabeth) are likely to take a more liberal line, particularly on issues such as climate change.
With Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street and the likelihood that Kamala Harris could soon be in the White House, the future of right-wing media might not be quite as rosy as it once appeared.
The most important matter of all is we should all know exactly who controls the media that forms the backdrop to our lives, whether it is who is in control in the Murdoch dynasty, what Marshall is up to or even whether Gibb owns the comparatively tiny JC.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — read his column here.