The conservative press in Britain is not what it used to be. And The Daily Telegraph is the best example of how the favorite newspaper of Margaret Thatcher and the Royal Family is today a newspaper without soul or future, although it still has a glorious past. Like its former headquarters on Fleet Street, which was presided over by a gigantic clock that is still preserved in the majestic building that was later the European headquarters of Goldman Sachs and that since 2021 belongs to the royal family of Qatar.
An institution, during World War II, the Telegraph quietly helped recruit enemy code breakers to Bletchley Park. The ability to solve your crossword puzzle in less than 12 minutes was considered a selection test.
The Telegraph was rescued in 2004 by the Barclays, twin brothers (David and Frederick), British billionaires, who also bought the country’s oldest political weekly, The Spectator. They then paid 665,000 pounds although neither of them gave them money, but it did give them social influence and respectability. In 1976 they did the same by purchasing the Ritz hotel in London for £80 million, which in 2020 they sold to a Qatari investor.
Now, after the death of David Barclay, his brother wants to cash in and in June 2023 the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) was put up for sale in order to pay a debt of 1.5 billion pounds that it had with Lloyds Bank. Since then, the TMG has had many suitors: from Axel Springer (who already wanted to buy the Financial Times) or the Daily Mail (the ultra-conservative tabloid) and several millionaires with no other credentials than money and the ambition to prosper and gain visibility in business circles. power of British society.
The initial value of the Telegraph group has gone from 665 million in 2004 to around 140 million, making it easy prey.
Controversy has been brewing since the moment the “new rich Arabs” who already control some of the most iconic companies of the former empire entered this auction. First there were the Russian oligarchs in search of refuge to launder their fortunes and then the Arab sheikhs willing to buy even the BBC or Big Ben if one day they were for sale. The phenomenon has been worrying for some time and the journalist Oliver Bullough describes it very well in his best-seller Butler of the World where he denounces that Great Britain has become the great “butler” of these fortunes amassed by white-collar speculators. All of them have seen London as a “tax haven” and a “refuge city” where they can protect themselves from enemies, competitors and hitmen.
Now, this “money laundering” is joined by a race not for football clubs (Chelsea or Manchester City), legendary hotels (Ritz, Savoy or Claridge’s) or department stores (Harrods) but for journalistic companies, whose figures of business are very modest compared to other sectors where the Arab world is investing massively (sports is today a gigantic global business of about 750 billion dollars). Nothing to do with the media that are seen by these plutocrats as a “safety net” to protect their other more profitable investments and “whiten their image.” They buy media, they say, so they can see that “we are armed and can defend ourselves.”
The TMG is for sale and the old lady of Fleet Street is about to marry RedBird International Media Investments, a group led by the family of the sheikh of the Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi, Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
On October 21, the British government paralyzed the auction led by Goldman Sachs on behalf of the TMG. Labor, Liberals and Conservatives protested and called for Ofcom, the competition regulator, to intervene, and Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, commissioned an opinion from the communications regulator.
If the offer has the green light from the British government, TMG would be in the hands of a new company registered in London and symbolically led by its current CEO, the North American Jeff Zucker. The former head of CNN and NBCUniversal has been quick to assure the editors of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator that the new owners will respect their editorial autonomy. A promise that looks more like a toast to the sun.
The Sheikh of Abu Dhabi and vice president of the Union of Arab Emirates, owner of Manchester City, already owns The National, the main English-language newspaper in the Gulf and Sky News Arabia, but this would be his first major media investment outside of its territory.
The next general elections in Great Britain may be held very soon and that is why it is urgent that this change of ownership does not put at risk the editorial line of the newspaper and magazine with the greatest roots among conservative voters. The Telegraph is the last general newspaper in broadsheet format that on Saturdays surpasses The Times of London in sales and that the eccentric Boris Johnson once wanted to run, and whose previous owner, the Canadian Conrad Black ended up imprisoned in the United States for fraud, but he was pardoned by his friend Donald Trump.
The worst thing is that the alternative to the Dubaiites is Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail Group (DMG), who already has 40% of the newspaper market in Great Britain and if he took over TMG he would have 50%. And if the French have declared yogurt a strategic sector to protect, even more so should journalistic companies.
