Great piece by Peter Preston about the ethical shambles at the Daily Telegraph. Sample:

It’s easy, in such murky circumstances, to lose sight of basic command structures. Much of Fleet Street, indeed, has planted “content” and “strategy” nametags across its digital garden. But the grisly lesson of HSBC is also a fundamental one.

Title inflation may make a paper look cutting-edge digital. It may impress advertisers and investors. It may seem a modern necessity in a world of “native advertising” and fast-flowing revenue streams. But serious newspapers, in whatever form, have a duty of trust: a duty not to be leaned on by pushy politicians, chummy bankers – or advertisers. For how can you put truth first if the truth is for sale?

That’s why the Oborne storm is so deeply damaging. It can’t be put right by appointing some “chief integrity officer”. What the Telegraph lacks, as it stinks and stings under pressure, is what it must now rediscover: a journalist who looks at the likes of HSBC and tells them to get stuffed as and when necessary. A human being, not a corporate assassin. An editor.

Yep.

ALSO: This from Roy Greenslade:

According to Oborne, at a meeting with MacLennan, the CEO was unapologetic about the matter, suggesting that it was no big deal. But it is, of course. It is a very big deal indeed because it goes to the heart of a paper’s credibility. Readers will not trust a newspaper that withholds or censors stories to please advertisers.

Everyone in the newspaper industry knows that advertising is harder and harder to come by. We know also that TMG has been reporting a level of profits for several years that surpasses any other national group. How, we wonder, does it do that?

The implication of Oborne’s revelations is that part of its strategy involves pandering to big advertisers to the extent of curbing critical editorial content.

I imagine this is rare, but once one company gets away with threatening to pull its advertising unless negative stories are pulled then the word goes round. It opens the door to discreet deals. So other instances may have occurred that we know nothing about.

Oborne felt that the HSBC case was so blatant that it was impossible to ignore and it could have far-reaching implications. Frankly, I’m amazed that MacLennan would be party to such activities.

Many people throw mud at him, but there are very few newspaper managers who love the company of journalists as much as he does. He and I have fallen out several times down the years, but I haven’t lost my regard for him. This matter, however, is of a different order altogether.

So what happens next? One theory going the rounds is that the Barclay twins, the owners of the Telegraph, have decided that the way to extract the most value from the paper is to let it go the profitable way of pandering to advertisers, on the grounds that it might last another ten profitable years before it finally collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. So it’s possible they’re not unduly bothered by the fuss about “ethics”.

That line from Alexander Pope came to mind time and time again last night as I watched a marvellous Storyville film about the short life and tragic death of Aaron Schwartz. At the end, I was left with the same mixture of anger and despair that I felt when news broke of his suicide, hounded to his death by a vindictive and disproportionate prosecution by the Feds for organising a massive download of scholarly articles from JSTOR.

I never met him, but I followed him through his writing and his work from the first time he surfaced on the Net. I vividly remember his blog posts about his reactions to Stanford, especially the way he tried to figure out why the world (and specifically that particular corner of it) was so weird and dysfunctional. And every day I use Markdown and RSS, two of the tools he helped to create. So like legions of others, I am in his debt.

I knew most of the story of his life. He and I shared a mutual friend (who was truly heartbroken by his death). What I hadn’t known — and the film revealed — was what he was like as a very young child. And the truth turns out to be that he was remarkable from the very beginning, one of the brightest, most engaging toddlers I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the film was the way it managed to be deeply moving without being sentimental: that’s a hard balance to strike, but the film-makers pulled it off. In the end, as I said, it left one with a burning sense of injustice and anger. Two things stand out. The first is the hypocrisy of an administration (Obama’s) which vindictively pursues this idealistic young genius while failing to prosecute the criminals who wrecked the banking system. And secondly there is the thought that the real significance of Aaron’s treatment is that it heralds a future in which the established order will do whatever it takes to suppress uses of the Internet that challenge it. Aaron was, after all, well on his way to becoming a powerful political activist.

A fragment of the Yosemite climb. Unbelievable.

As I was saying, now is the time to keep our heads. Max Hastings, alas, has lost his:

Our principal weapons against terrorists are not tanks, Typhoon fighter jets or warships, but instead intelligence officers using electronic surveillance.

Much cant has been peddled recently about the supposed threat to liberty posed by government eavesdropping on our lives.

Such people as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Edward Snowden (the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor turned treacherous fugitive), who have broadcast American and British secrets wholesale, are celebrated as heroes by some people who should know better, many of them writing for the Guardian or broadcasting for the BBC.

In truth, Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping.

Eh? As Caspar Bowden tweeted, “culprits of Paris, Woolwich, Boston not just all known to police, already jailed/ wiretapped for terrorism, or failed double-agent recruits”. So where does Snowden come into this? Answer: nowhere.

The strangest thing about Downton Abbey, the reality distortion field masquerading as costume drama, is not that it has been captivating British audiences — for the Brits are congenitally susceptible to this kind of class-ridden crap — but that it is apparently a big hit in the US, which supposedly is a more egalitarian, less deferential society.

Also interesting is the coincidence that — as Thomas Piketty has shown — levels of inequality in the US are now approaching what they were in Britain when Downton Abbey was in its heyday. Wonder how many of those addled American Downton addicts realise that?