Long ago, during the Suez crisis, both the Observer and the Guardian endured difficult days as advertisers were pressured to desert their “unpatriotic” pages. It’s a recurrent theme: the covert – and often unprovable – draining of revenue streams to exact retribution or change of editorial policy. And wherever, around the world, press freedoms are at their weakest, so the ad squeeze comes on.
It’s a matter of principle: which is why the digital bullying of Paperchase to renounce marketing deals with the Daily Mail has to be confronted. You don’t have to love the Mail to see the point. Stop Funding Hate may legitimately urge Mail readers to quit (and Mail readers may, equally legitimately, examine the causes SFH espouses and make up their own minds). But trolling rather nervous companies such as Paperchase isn’t legitimate. It’s the thin end of a dangerous wedge – with no winners in sight, from left or right.
As last week’s Ipso complaints ruling on Trevor Kavanagh’s “The Muslim Problem” column for the Sun mordantly observes: “There is no clause in the editors’ code which prohibits publication of offensive content”. Nor should there be.
