Critics rip Jeff Zucker’s deal to buy UK Telegraph, call backer UAE a ‘sexist regime’
Ex-CNN boss Jeff Zucker’s buyout firm is pressing ahead with a bid to buy UK newspaper Daily Telegraph — even as critics slammed the “sexist regime” of his financial backer, Abu Dhabi.
The Barclay family regained control of Britain’s Telegraph newspaper Monday after the Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI helped repay $1.5 billion in debt as part of a takeover bid.
But the deal is under fire amid a government probe and criticism by Telegraph journalists — with one critic saying the respected outlet should not be owned by a foreign “sexist regime.”
Ahead of the debt deal, senior Telegraph journalists Camilla Tominey, Janet Daley and Fraser Nelson slammed the agreement, which would see former CNN boss Zucker, who is the CEO of RedBird IMI, take control of The Telegraph and Spectator magazine.
In a Friday opinion piece in The Telegraph entitled, “A misogynist foreign state must not be allowed to own The Telegraph,” associate editor Tominey warned that the newspaper should not be owned by a “sexist regime,” and claimed the controversial deal “doesn’t pass the sniff test” because “the UAE falls short of Western standards and values.”
She urged culture secretary Lucy Frazer, who ordered media regulator, Ofcom, to investigate the proposed deal’s potential breach of media standards last week, to recognize that a newspaper “promoting women as key columnists” might “struggle to operate under the guise of any authoritarian regime that implements sexist laws.”
The backlash comes as a proposed transfer of the publications to RedBird IMI have been thrown into doubt after the British government last week officially intervened to block the deal while it investigates whether any takeover would have an impact on freedom of expression under the new owner.
Ofcom’s investigation comes roughly two weeks after RedBird IMI proposed a deal to fork over about $750 million to allow the Barclay family — owners of the Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine — to repay their nearly $1.5 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group, which sized the assets in June.
Under the plan, RedBird IMI, a joint venture between RedBird Capital and International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi, funded primarily by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, United Arab Emirates’ vice president, was set to quickly gain control of the assets through a debt-for-equity swap– until the government stepped in.
Now, the Barclays family will retain temporary control instead of it going to RedBird IMI. If the deal clears UK regulators, the properties will get turned over to control of the Zucker-led group.
Lloyds confirmed in a statement that it had received the funds to Reuters on Monday, but now RedBird IMI must wait until the probe is concluded on Jan. 26.
Tominey wrote in The Telegraph that she was confident that the deal would be blocked.
“We can trust that they will come up with the right conclusions because it is obvious to all of us that a newspaper owned by a Gulf state will face questions surrounding freedom of expression,” she said.
Her colleague, Daley pushed back on the deal, raising that point in her opinion piece, which was published in the Telegraph on Saturday.
“In a free society no government – including the country’s elected one – should own a news media outlet. The power wielded by a state must be, always and without qualification, separate from the presentation and analysis of information in the public domain,” she wrote. “That principle has been one of the distinguishing differences between tyrannies and democracies in the modern world.”
Daley added that newspapers were an essential to avoid having a “public discourse dominated by the grotesque absurdities of ‘deep fake’ video clips, manipulated photographs, unchecked hysterical testimony and outright deception… overseen by unqualified and possibly irresponsible social media billionaires who are accountable to no one.”
The Spectator magazine, which is also part of the proposed deal, and is edited by Telegraph columnist Nelson said in an interview with The Times of London that “it is not ‘sentimental’ to be uncomfortable at the prospect of Britain’s oldest weekly magazine being snapped up by the Emirates.”
Elsewhere, former British Prime Minister Liz Truss urged the government to protect The Telegraph’s editorial independence, The Daily Mail reported.
Truss emphasized the importance that the newspaper be able to publish “freely” after Ministers decided to launch a review of the deal amid fears of censorship and foreign interference.
In recent days, Zucker has gone on a public relations tour, telling The Financial Times he would would create an editorial advisory board to uphold the independence of The Telegraph and The Spectator and provide reassurances.
The former CNN boss also lashed out at rival bidders for a conservative British publication of “slinging mud.”
Last week, the exec also told The Telegraph’s business editor Christopher Williams he would “resign” if anyone came to him with any suggestion of pressure on the editorial team from the United Arab Emirates.
