Will a German-owned Daily Telegraph remain Eurosceptic?
T_ he bidding war for the Telegraph Group may be drawing to a close. Many lies have been told and much disinformation spread. Even now it is difficult to discern the final outcome. Last weekend the Sunday Times reported that a bid by Axel Springer had been rejected because it was too low. In fact, it seems that the German publishing group is the most likely victor. Its executives are confident enough to have telephoned members of the senior management of the Telegraph Group to discuss its future.
Because we are so parochial in this country, very little is known about Axel Springer. I suspect that the Left, and in particular the Guardian and the Independent, are rather amused to see the Daily Telegraph slipping into German hands. There have certainly been no angry pieces about the unsuitability of Axel Springer. During the Cold War the company was high on the hate list of leftists because of its uncompromisingly right-wing stance, and the Left in Germany still dislikes it. However, there is little prospect of an antiAxel Springer bandwagon here. The Guardian and the Independent have sniffed that Axel Springer is robustly pro-European Union. Telegraph Group executives privately favour a bid by the Germans above all others. The only public disquiet has been expressed by journalists at the Telegraph newspapers. They want to know whether they will he asked to sign up to commitments to further the unification of Europe and support the state of Israel if the titles (which include The Spectator) are taken over by Axel Springer.
The answer seems to be no. All of Axel Springer's editorial employees in Germany are asked to sign up to the company's five principles, which include a commitment to the state of Israel and 'the unification of the European peoples'. But I am told by a Springer executive that no staff who work for the 110 newspapers and magazines which the company owns outside Germany have been asked to sign up to the commitments, and that it is inconceivable that employees of the Telegraph Group will be asked to do so. The same executive adds, however, that 'the company is committed to those values'. Mathias Dopfner, the 41year-old former music critic who is chief executive of Axel Springer, has separately played down fears about the commitments, claiming that they give a 'general idea about values' and would not be used to influence the editorial line of a newspaper.
So it seems unlikely that the Germans, if they acquire the Telegraph Group, will at once impose their pro-European values on the Daily and Sunday Telegraph or The Spectator. Indeed, Springer's executives have been putting it about that the company is in some respects 'anti-Brussels'. There are certainly several 'anti-Brussels' voices in Bild, the mass-circulation daily tabloid, and Die Welt, the upmarket German broadsheet, both of which are owned by Springer. But there are not many anti-EU ones. I am struck by the honest admission of the Springer executive who told me that 'the company is committed to those values'. This suggests to me that in the long run Axel Springer might have difficulty in presiding over newspapers that were viscerally anti-European.
The experience of City merchant banks gobbled up by German behemoths in the 1990s may be instructive. The new German owners emphasised their admiration for the banks they had bought. Change usually came slowly, but when it did, after three or four years, it was often sudden and far-reaching. So it might be for the Telegraph Group. To start with, the Daily Telegraph would probably be encouraged to continue in its old, quaint English ways. In any case, aside from the proEuropean commitment, the paper would have no difficulty in observing the other four, being even more pro-Israel than Axel Springer, and delighted to embrace the proAtlanticist clause that was added by the Germans after the events of 11 September 2001. But after a time Mr Dopfner might simply tell the editor of the Daily Telegraph to stop whingeing about Europe.
Might this explain the government's reported sympathy for the Axel Springer bid? If the Barclay brothers or Daily Mail and General Trust were to acquire the Telegraph Group, its titles would remain resolutely Eurosceptic. (Let me, by the way, disavow any secret support, as a columnist for the Daily Mail, for the bid by DMGT.) It would obviously suit the government's book if the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday stablemate were to jettison their opposition to the European constitution before the promised referendum, not to mention the debate about the euro. With Axel Springer as the owner of the papers, the government might get exactly what it wants.
Consider for a moment what would happen if a right-wing, Eurosceptic newspaper group were on the verge of buying the Guardian. There would be one hell of a row: angry leaders, questions in Parliament, items on Newsnight — the whole caboodle. Dinner tables up and down the land would be convulsed with controversy. And yet the prospect of Axel Springer acquiring the Daily Telegraph has so far barely caused a ripple. Perhaps it will not happen. We should not rule out the Barclay brothers or even DMGT. There is even talk of Axel Springer linking up with one of the other bidders because — according to this theory — it does not want to enter the British newspaper market without having its hand held by a local publisher. But at the time of writing a successful bid by Axel Springer alone seems the most likely outcome. Mr Dopfner has set his heart on acquiring publications outside the sclerotic German market, where the advertising recession has been particularly severe, and plainly regards the Telegraph Group as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Surely, at the very least, there should be some sort of public debate about the desirability of Axel Springer buying these titles. It is perfectly true that the Daily Telegraph has not always been a Eurosceptic paper. In 1975 it urged its readers to vote in favour of remaining in the Common Market, but by the time Conrad Black bought the Telegraph titles in 1986 they were showing incipient signs of Euroscepticism. The Euroscepticism was reined in under Max Hastings's editorship of the Daily Telegraph, which lasted from 1986 to 1995, but let rip when Charles Moore took over as editor. It is an established feature of the paper. Axel Springer may well be happy to declare that it will respect the editorial independence of the Daily Telegraph and its sister titles. But remember this lesson of history — that undertakings given by the new owner of a newspaper almost always turn out to be worthless.
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