Lionel Barber, editor of the FT, has been offered a Légion d’Honneur gong by France – but grows a bit pensive over accepting. “Not good publicity in the UK just now,” he tweets. No great foresight needed there as the Mail clears a couple of pages to slam this “social climber and name-dropper extraordinaire”.
One more example, perhaps, why working journalists – from Sir Max Hastings to Sir Simon Jenkins – would be better steering clear of national honours systems. Journalism just isn’t a gong-friendly job. The curse of the cronies soils all it touches. But the Mail’s lowest blow was reminding us how Barber features in this year’s GQ list of best-connected media men, along with Owen Jones, Piers Morgan and the editor-in-chief of Mail Online.
Ellison sharpens her pen for Ailes
The admirable Sarah Ellison, who left the Wall Street Journal when it was bought by Rupert, and made a new career out of monitoring the Murdoch empire, clearly senses another book gestating as she surveys the wreckage of Roger Ailes’s reputation at Fox News: escalating allegations of harassment and sexism. And there’s a fascinating comparison as she gets her show on the road for Vanity Fair.
“If [phone] hacking occurred in the shadows, many staffers say that Ailes’s alleged offences were much more apparent. ‘So much of it happened in plain view,’ as one person told me. ‘It’s hard to believe that executive management didn’t know what Ailes was up to…’.Already, multiple executives have been implicated in the scandal. ‘Some were more involved than others,’ the individual says. ‘Hacking was bad. This is arguably worse.’”
Late to bed and early to rise
NBC in America buys forthcoming Olympics rights for $7.5bn. The Discovery Channel does likewise in Europe for $1.5bn. Very soon, the BBC will be sub-licensing coverage from Discovery, and paying for the privilege. But are all Olympiads equally valuable? Early viewing figures in the UK show a drop of around 30% on London 2012. Well, of course, that’s the difference between home and away. But it’s also, perhaps crucially, the difference across time zones. Which means Tokyo 2020’s 8pm evening prime athletics time is noon in London and 7am in New York, with much of the earlier stuff scattered in the wee small hours. Time for a wee small rebate perhaps?
Off in a huff
Vanity publishing means plonking your own surname atop of the masthead. So onwards and upwards over 11 years for the Huffington Post (aka the Daily Arianna). But what happens when Mrs HuffPo decides to go off and run a startup called Thrive Global instead? Huffington Thrive Global I can understand. But no one, over time, will understand a Huffington Post with no Huff.
