It’s a sad indictment of our newspaper industry when journalists start yearning for their title to be owned by a former KGB agent.
The London Evening Standard is now three-quarters owned by former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev
This week looks likely to see the latest stage of the Russian takeover of London. Not content with owning football clubs and virtually every large house in west London, now those damned Russkies, with their swag bags of Moscow gold, are coming for more of our newspapers.
Last year, Alexander Lebedev bought the London Evening Standard for a token fee. The joke went that you could buy the Standard for £1 – the whole company. With the Standard’s circulation collapsing and the title weighed down by loads of debt, Lebedev axed staff, reduced terms and conditions of employees and is pledged to invest £25 million over three years. He has made the paper free and increased its print run.
At the time of writing, he may soon complete the purchase of The Independent and its Sunday sister. His business plan had Rod Liddle as editor, until a major Facebook campaign forced a quick rethink. Now rumours abound that former BBC and ITV head honcho and well-known barrow boy Greg Dyke may be in the running or Jeremy Paxman or even Ian Hislop. Blimey, it’s like putting Janet Street-Porter in charge of a national newspaper. Oh.
There is much speculation about what Lebedev will do with the titles. Many suspected he would make them online only. That seems unlikely. Now the red-hot favourite theory is that moneybags Lebedev will turn The Independent into a free title aiming to capture some of the advertising market by upping its circulation. Fearful they were to be closed if the sale did not go ahead, staff at the paper have already accepted – with a KGB gun to their head – a reduction in their redundancy terms.
Across the channel, one of Lebedev’s comrades, Alexander Pugachyov, has snapped up France Soir, increased its print run, halved the cover price and more than doubled the number of journalists working on the title. There are rumours that, in return, France is buying warships from his father’s shipyard – a story not likely to be reported in France Soir, even if it is true.
So the Russians are becoming the new press barons. Lebedev dropped in on Gordon Brown last time he fleetingly passed through London. Unsurprisingly, shortly afterwards, the Office of Fair Trading said it would not investigate the deal over competition issues. Lebedev has installed his son to run the family business. He’s screwing the workers. The talk is of having a new editor in place in advance of the general election so they can have some influence over the political agenda.
In fact, the resemblance to Rupert Murdoch or the late unlamented Robert Maxwell is uncanny.
Despite this, you get the sense that journalists on many of our local and regional newspapers being starved of resources and facing more cuts and closures would leap at the chance of an injection of funds from the KGB – or anywhere.
In the dire straits in which the newspaper industry currently finds itself, it can be easy to look for messiahs. It wouldn’t be much of a prediction to suggest this one, like all the others, may just turn out to be false.
For people such as Lebedev and Pugachyov, media freedom is not a big concern. Workers’ rights are not high on their agenda. As far as they are concerned, newspapers are a plaything – another accessory when you already have the former state-owned industry and more property than you know what to do with in your portfolio. They use their titles to push their own interests – the public interest is not a priority.
Beware secret agents bearing gifts.
