Stephen Glover's media column will not be appearing in The Independent on Monday. But this lacuna is not linked in any way to the dramas reported in my posting yesterday (Telegraph bid to gag Glover denies press freedom). Glover is taking the week off by prior arrangement and the column will be written by the former Observer editor Donald Trelford, who is a regular stand-in.
The journalistic community has been tightening its support around Glover and his editor Simon Kelner. This includes people who have suffered in the past from Glover's barbed prose and others who have no particular love for Kelner. As one former editor remarked: "I don't care for either of them, but this is a matter of principle". Indeed it is. However, what is so interesting about some of the public comments on my original posting - and a number of private emails to me - is that it is taken for granted that newspaper owners have long used their influence to avoid journalistic scrutiny. And, worse, that this is neither surprising nor a matter for real concern.
I can understand the cynicism, of course. But compromising an editor's editorial prerogative is surely a matter for concern. A serious newspaper that lectures the great and the good on how to conduct their lives must be seen to act with probity. If its owners and senior executives are engaged in suppressing comment about themselves then their newspapers' credibility suffers as a consequence. They forfeit the right to the moral high ground. As pompous as that sounds, it is how it should be. Otherwise, what's the point of journalism?
