Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Richard Desmond, chairman, Northern & Shell Network Ltd, Paul Ashford, Editorial
Director, Northern & Shell Network Ltd, and Hugh Whittow, editor, Daily Express—Oral
evidence (QQ 584–696)
Richard Desmond: It is quite an insulting question.
Paul Ashford: Even if you think of your own self-interest, your reputation as a
newspaper of 100 years standing is far more important. Your long-term reputation is far
more important than the sales of a few issues.
Q554 Yasmin Qureshi: When your newspaper was publishing the stuff it published about
the McCanns, it turned out to be complete lies. How are you able to say that your
newspaper has a 100-year-old reputation to protect?
Paul Ashford: The reputation is the first consideration. We have been advised it is
inappropriate to go into detail about the McCanns because we have to give evidence to the
Leveson Inquiry, and we are supposed not to anticipate it here.
Q555 Yasmin Qureshi: I am not going to discuss the details of the McCanns case or the
Leveson Inquiry. Your newspaper paid over £500,000 to them, and from what the McCanns
themselves have said to the Inquiry, a lot of the stuff published in the newspaper was
completely wrong, and also the diary being published.
Hugh Whittow: We did not print the diary.
Q556 Yasmin Qureshi: Sorry, my mistake about the diary. You were saying in answer to
Ben’s question about the reputation of newspapers, and you do not look at profit.
Richard Desmond: We made mistakes, which I certainly apologised for and the
newspaper apologised for. There was no hesitation about apologising. We put it on the
front page; we did not try to hide the mistakes that we made, and we paid out very quickly.
We made a terrible mistake.
Paul Ashford: We were asked very clearly whether we make a financial calculation
based on whether we could make more money by selling newspapers and paying off the
costs than not running the stories. Well, that calculation is never made; it is not what we
do. I stand by what I said: your reputation is paramount.
Q557 Mr Bradshaw: Does that mean that the financial viability of the press is not a
relevant consideration when talking about or considering the public interest?
Paul Ashford: Your financial viability in the long term is absolutely linked to this
question of reputation and trust. Because, yes, you might sell more newspapers with one
particular story taking a particular angle, but in the long term people are not going to trust
you and they are not going to buy you.
Richard Desmond: Sorry to be a bore, but in 1975 we took the decision to publish
this story about the Marshall amplifier because ultimately all you have is your reputation.
That is not to say that during many years of our music magazines, etc, we may have got it
wrong. If we had got it wrong—I can’t think of an instance but—
Paul Ashford: The Roland bass guitar. We said its neck was too heavy. We were
wrong about that.
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