Sunday Business Post loses Editor

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis

Wednesday October 27, 2004 23:51

by Michael Hennigan - Finfacts.com

Some years ago, when I worked in a Swedish multinational, it issued a communication from HQ which read: 'Mr. X has asked to be relieved of his position as President of Y Division (the biggest in the group)..We wish Mr. X well in his future career.'

Mr. X of course go a pay-off to keep his trap shut and agree to a 2 yr non-compete clause. He was soon forgotten and the usual self-serving tripe about 'Group culture' continued to be peddled as if nothing had happened.

The foregoing is par-for-the-course in commercial operations- use company funds to ward off sniffers of dirty linen. 'Commercial confidentiality' is the pat excuse but what is interesting is that media organisations generally behave no differently.

Today, the National Union of Journalists expressed surprise at the shock departure of Ted Harding from the editorship of the Sunday Business Post.

Ted Harding replaced founding editor Damien Kiberd in November 2001.

The NUJ said that Thomas Crosbie Holdings, which owns the newspaper and the Irish Examiner, and the Sunday Business Post's management have refused to disclose the reason's for the editor's departure.

The NUJ said it had received explicit guarantees from Thomas Crosbie Holdings, of the Sunday Business Post's editorial independence at the time of the newspaper's acquisition in 2002 and is now seeking an urgent meeting with the company.

The newspaper's site makes no reference to the departure of Ted Harding. It's news not fit to print!

It's bizarre to observe mainstream media organisations pleading for greater transparency in public affairs and bemoaning the restrictions which have been put on the use of the Freedom of Information Act, in recent years.

All mainstream organisations behave in a similar manner irrespective of the system of ownership. I recall reading a Vincent Browne column in the Sunday Business Post last year querying about the jurisdiction where Tony O'Reilly pays his taxes. What struck me at the time was that Vincent chooses his targets well. He would hardly raise questions about the Crosbie family in their own paper.

The general rule is that internal information on a media company is published by a competitor. Perish the thought that 'commercial confidentiality' would be endangered!!

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Addendum

by Michael Hennigan

Thu Oct 28, 2004 10:51

There was speculation on the Vincent Browne Tonight proramme last night that Harding was forced to pull an article on the tax affairs of businessman Denis O'Brien, last weekend.

O'Brien who made about £250 million (IR Pounds) from the sale of the loss making Esat Telecom at the height of the dot com boom, was a tax resident of Portugal at the time- a country which did not have any capital gains tax. As an Irish tax resident, he would have had to pay about £50 million (€63 million) in capital gains tax.

But publishing is a different sort of business

by Mike

Thu Oct 28, 2004 13:13

Normally the ONLY goal of most businesses is profits, so you can speculate when a major manager who seems successdul at that departs. But the media IS a little different. Like any business, it needs to make money to stay in existence. But unlike ordinary businesses, newspapers, etc. often have POLITICAL objectives as well.

So when you can rule out financial failures, unlike in ordinary businesses, when an editor in chief departs form a paper you shouldn't simmediately uspect "shenannigans" but until you know otherwise, the much more likely "difference of editorial opinion" between the editor and the publisher.

Remember -- the opinions expressed by a "free" paper are those of the publisher (if that's what the publisher wants) and the editors are hired on board to implement -- or leave if they can't stomach the tripe. And no, if this is the situation here it wouldn't be over one story of this sort. Oh it CAN be over one story, but that would be one hell of a story, the sort that brings down governments, not a minor scandal.

Ted Harding

by Kieron Wood - The Sunday Business Post

Mon Nov 15, 2004 17:12

kwood at sbpost dot ie

An interesting hypothesis about the "secrecy" surrounding Ted Harding's departure, but quite inaccurate.

Ted left on Friday. By Sunday we had a story on page 2, plus the lead letter on the letters page and the Vincent Browne column speculating on the reasons for the move.

Hardly secret!

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Sunday Business Post loses Editor

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