ROB ROSE: Why media independence matters
Media moguls have long been interfering in their own newspapers. But doing this erodes the value of the media assets
Robert Maxwell, the former owner of the Daily Mirror whose body was retrieved from the Atlantic in 1991 after a mishap on his yacht, is perhaps the most notorious of the modern breed of media owners. In 1990, The Guardian newspaper asked Maxwell — also known as Cap’n Bob — if, hypothetically, he could produce the front page of the tabloid if he had to. His response: "Not only could — I do." Taken aback, the journalist responded that surely Maxwell wouldn’t want to interfere in news — a practice considered verboten by media owners, given conventions around press freedom. Maxwell replied: "I’m not shy of interfering if I have to." He certainly wasn’t. One book on Maxwell said the Daily Mirror came "to resemble a Maxwell family album, studded with photographs of Cap’n Bob and filled with references to [his] other companies". Nor is Maxwell the only one. When some editors took issue with how Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch was behaving at the News of the World, Murdoch said: "I did not...
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