Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Martin Clarke, publisher, Mail Online, Edward Roussel, Digital Editor, Telegraph Media
Group, and Philip Webster, editor, Times Online—Oral evidence (QQ 1306–1383)
something that either is not exclusive or we do not think is going to stay exclusive, it goes
online. Simple as that.
Q1520 George Eustice: Do you do basically the same?
Philip Webster: We do the same. We like very much breaking stories online. If a
good political story comes up during the day, it gives us great pleasure to break it online if it
is our own. We have a newspaper schedule for a morning conference at 10.45. Several
stories on that list will be marked with an X, for exclusive, and we would not dream of
touching those online during the day unless they came out by other means. We would then
put them up onto the website as quickly as possible. Somebody who has an exclusive tends
to want to break it in the paper, but if they are unsure that it is going to last for the day,
they will come to me and say, “Look, I have got something rather good here,” and we would
probably give it a better show, possibly as the leading story on the website—a show they
might well not have got had they waited for the paper.
Edward Roussel: I think it is a given with breaking news that, because we compete
against the world’s news services, you have to get it out as rapidly as possible. What we try
to do is get the web to work in conjunction with the newspaper or the specific story. For
example, on our recent exposé on educational standards, that scoop was made possible by
the use of hidden cameras. Obviously the video that derives from that story is something
that is suitable for online, but not the paper. What we will try to do is get a maximum
impact for that story by using the website and the newspaper in conjunction with one
another.
Q1521 Paul Farrelly: Mr Clarke, quite apart from issues of timing and physical
space in the hard copy, are there any editorial policies on what you would cover online that
would not go into the paper, or indeed pictures, for instance on the grounds of taste or a
different audience? Is there an editorial policy?
Martin Clarke: There is no formal policy. Although the print and digital products
are quite different, we are working in a different market, so therefore the product in one
market will be different from what it is in another market. In terms of policy, we try to stay
on the same track. Obviously, whoever is editing the paper will make their decisions during
the day, I will make mine, and it is not practical to sit down and hammer out a common line
on everything, so from time to time they will vary.
In terms of taste, I think it cuts both ways. Sometimes there have been pictures that
I have hung back on for whatever reason, and then been slightly surprised to see them in the
paper, and maybe vice versa. You are dealing with individual people making their individual
editorial judgments, and they will not always be the same, but in general terms I do not think
there is anything, or very much, that you would find online that you would not find in the
paper under some circumstances, and vice versa.
Q1522 Paul Farrelly: You mentioned photos then. What about stories? Let us
take a couple of controversial examples: the coverage of Christopher Jefferies and the
coverage of the Josef Fritzl case.
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