Black Wednesday at the Telegraph

[Gittins Gal]

For every James Delingpole heading for the exit, there seems to be a Dan Hodges or a Mary Ridell to replace them.

And now Ben Brogan and Damian Thompson are off.

As the article points out, there seems to be a concerted effort to move the Telegraph to the same wishy washy centre left ground now occupied by the Tory party.

Reading it these days, I find myself constantly checking the masthead just to make sure I'm not looking at the Guardian.

Wonder how long Norman Tebbit's going to continue?

[tractor]

For every James Delingpole heading for the exit, there seems to be a Dan Hodges or a Mary Ridell to replace them.

And now Ben Brogan and Damian Thompson are off.

As the article points out, there seems to be a concerted effort to move the Telegraph to the same wishy washy centre left ground now occupied by the Tory party.

Reading it these days, I find myself constantly checking the masthead just to make sure I'm not looking at the Guardian.

Wonder how long Norman Tebbit's going to continue?

Don't know but my Mum has a dark brown overcoat and I have 2 o levels and a budgerigar.

[NickFitz]

As the article points out, there seems to be a concerted effort to move the Telegraph to the same wishy washy centre left ground now occupied by the Tory party.

Cock-up, not conspiracy. A few months ago, the chief executive got rid of the editor-in-chief and replaced him with some Yank who has no newspaper experience, but is assumed to be au fait with the world of digital media because he once sold an iPhone app, or something. Since his arrival, all the best journalists and columnists have either been forced out for disagreeing with his "strategy" or are quietly planning their exits. As he knows precisely nothing about the Telegraph, its readership, or the British Press, he ends up hiring completely unsuitable replacements, probably on the basis that they know how to use Facebook on their phones and therefore qualify, in his eyes, as "digerati".

See Private Eye's Street of Shame column if you want to follow along with the whole sorry saga until the paper finally goes bust.

[DodgyAgent]

I was just wondering which telegraph readers could possibly be interested in an article like this:

Labour’s modern Magna Carta has to seal the deal with voters - Telegraph

[Sysman]

I was just wondering which telegraph readers could possibly be interested in an article like this:

Labour’s modern Magna Carta has to seal the deal with voters - Telegraph

No idea. I couldn't make it past the first paragraph or two.

The Telegraph has been in steady decline since the Barclay brothers (who are nowt to do with the bank) took it over.

[pjclarke]

You think James 'there aren't enough bullets' Delingpole was an asset? Really? rather than, oh, I dunno, an infantile fantasist?

Among the areas where these readers felt particularly betrayed was in its coverage of environmentalism and climate change. Here - especially in the wake of the Climategate revelations - was not only a barn door sized target but the perfect opportunity for the Telegraph to distance itself from the unthinkingly alarmist narrative being lazily promoted by almost every other newspaper (even, perhaps surprisingly, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times).

In this it had a massive advantage in columnist Christopher Booker, a longtime sceptic whose book The Real Global Warming Disaster remains probably the most thorough, ruthlessly clinical, and irrefutable takedown of the great climate change scam. But rather than build on Booker's expertise - and speak up for honest science and sound policy - the Telegraph instead recruited as its chief environmental commentator a left-leaning Fabian called Geoffrey Lean

Delingpole never read a primary source in his life and Booker is no better, a complete charlatan who (inter alia) cost the Sunday Times a lot of money by writing a pack of lies about the head of the IPCC, who denies the evidence on secondhand smoke and promotes the idea that white asbestos is harmless cos it is chemically identical to talcum, based on the claims of a known fraudster.

Reality, never forget, has a liberal bias.

[DodgyAgent]

You think James 'there aren't enough bullets' Delingpole was an asset? Really? rather than, oh, I dunno, an infantile fantasist?






Delingpole never read a primary source in his life and Booker is no better, a complete charlatan who (inter alia) cost the Sunday Times a lot of money by writing a pack of lies about the head of the IPCC, who denies the evidence on secondhand smoke and promotes the idea that white asbestos is harmless cos it is chemically identical to talcum, based on the claims of a known fraudster.

Reality, never forget, has a liberal bias.

I think we would rather believe Booker and Delingpole than a zealot like you

[Mich the Tester]

You think James 'there aren't enough bullets' Delingpole was an asset? Really? rather than, oh, I dunno, an infantile fantasist?

Is there a difference in the meejah?

[pjclarke]

I think we would rather believe Booker and Delingpole than a zealot like you

Free country ...

This week Richard Wilson’s book Don’t Get Fooled Again is published.(3) It contains a fascinating chapter on Booker’s claims about white asbestos. Since 2002, he has published 38 articles on this topic, and every one of them is wrong.

He champions the work of a man named John Bridle, who has described himself as “the world’s foremost authority on asbestos science”(4). Bridle has claimed to possess an honorary professorship from the Russian Academy of Sciences, to be a consultant to an institute at the University of Glamorgan, the chief asbestos consultant for an asbestos centre in Lisbon, and a consultant to Vale of Glamorgan trading standards department(5). None of these claims is true. Neither the institute at the University of Glamorgan nor the centre in Lisbon have ever existed(6). His only relationship with the Glamorgan trading standards department is to have been successfully prosecuted by it for claiming a qualification he does not possess(7,8).

None of this deters Mr Booker. Armed with Bridle’s claims, for the past six years he has waged a campaign against asbestos science. White asbestos cement, he maintains “poses no measurable risk to health”(9). He contends that “not a single case” of mesothelioma – the cancer caused by exposure to asbestos – “has ever been scientifically linked with asbestos cement”(10). A paper commissioned by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, he says, “concluded that the risk from white asbestos is “virtually zero”.”(11)

It does show that white asbestos (chrysotile) is less dangerous than brown or blue asbestos. But, while there is uncertainty about the numbers, it still presents a risk of mesothelioma, which depends on the level of exposure. People exposed to a high dose (between 10 and 100 fibres per millilitre per year (f/ml.yr)) have a risk (around two deaths per 100,000 for each f/ml.yr) of contracting this cancer. Only when the dose falls to 0.1 f/ml.yr does it become “probably insignificant”(13). But Booker’s columns contain no such caveat. He creates the impression that white asbestos is safe at all doses. The paper he misquotes also cites five scientific studies of exposure to asbestos cement, which record “high levels of mesothelioma mortality.”(14,15,16,17,18)

Two years ago, John Bridle’s misleading CV and dodgy record were exposed by the BBC’s You and Yours programme(19). So the BBC immediately became part of the conspiracy: in Booker’s words “a concerted move by the powerful ‘anti-asbestos lobby’ to silence Bridle”(20). He suggested that the broadcasting regulator Ofcom would clear John Bridle’s name(21). In June this year it threw out Bridle’s complaint and published evidence even more damning than that contained in the programme(22). So has Booker changed the way he sees “Britain’s leading practical asbestos expert”? Far from it. He tells me that “my view of Ofcom has plummeted”(23): it too has joined the conspiracy.

We are not talking about trivia here. This is a matter of life and death. How many people might have been exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos dust as a result of reading and believing Mr Booker’s columns?

[Flashman]

I for one will not Ben Brogans sycophantic Tory drivel.

The Telegraph is hurtling downhill though. There is less and less hard news reporting (requires journalists) and more and more comment/opinion pieces and general fluff