Christmas came early for media hacks this year with the sensational story that Business Secretary Vince Cable had told undercover Telegraph reporters that he had “declared war on Rupert Murdoch”.
The story had massive implications because it was Cable’s brief to decide on whether the bid by Murdoch’s News Corporation to take full control of BSkyB should be allowed.
But what was even more astonishing was that the scoop was delivered by the BBC’s Robert Peston and not the Telegraph.
Peston was adamant the story and audio was leaked to him by a “whistleblower” who said the Telegraph, which publically opposes the Murdoch deal, was not going to publish it for “commercial reasons”.
He wrote on his blog: “The whistleblower, who yesterday gave me the full recording, told me that the Telegraph's omission of these sections about Mr Murdoch was a commercial decision, motivated by the fact that the Telegraph - like Mr Cable - would rather News Corporation does not end up as 100% owner of BSkyB.”
After Peston broke the story, the Telegraph put Cable’s comments about Murdoch up on telegraph.co.uk.
It also issued a statement: "It is utter nonsense to suggest that the Daily Telegraph did not publish comments from Vince Cable on the Rupert Murdoch takeover of BSkyB for commercial reasons. It was an editorial decision to focus this morning on Cable's comments on the Coalition because they were of wider interest to our readers. We have made it clear, in the paper, online and in broadcast interviews today, that we would be publishing further comments in the forthcoming days."
It has been pointed out that the Telegraph managed its award winning scoop on MPs’ expenses by releasing fresh material day-after-day. But sceptics pointed to the fact that the Telegraph had published what it described as the “full transcript” of Cable’s remarks to its reporters while omitting the Murdoch comments.
Various conspiracy theories took hold and the whole affair demonstrated how murky things can get when a story conflicts with a newspaper management’s commercial interests.
The story and how it broke was peppered with ironies. The BBC got the scoop but the undercover methods used by the Telegraph reporters, described as “entrapment” by some, would not be sanctioned by the Corporation for its journalists.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson blogged about the consequence of the Telegraph’s undercover reporting: “Starting from today, politicians will be more wary about what they say to their own constituents, more suspicious of journalists and more keen to meet behind closed doors without the risk of microphones, cameras, prying eyes and straining ears.”
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson has controversially joined the Fleet Street groups in opposing the News Corp BSkyB deal so, like the Telegraph, would not have wanted Cable to be stripped of his power to oversee it, which was the direct consequence of the BBC running the story.
Then there is a newspaper having to hunt its own mole.
And the final irony is that the one person who has most benefitted from “Cablegate” is Rupert Murdoch, although none of his newspapers nor his Sky News had anything to do with breaking the story.
