When you can’t believe or trust what you read, you are looking, as Thomas Jefferson put it, at a polluted vehicle.
This is George Osborne’s final week as editor of London’s Evening Standard. During his three year tenure, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer became the flagship newspaper’s polluter-in-chief. A cynical and ill-equipped editor who didn’t see the ethical conflict in offering big companies like Uber and Google a “money-can’t-buy” promise in return for favourable editorial coverage – duping readers into thinking they were reading news, when in fact they were reading advertorial.
Nor did he care that his con trick foisted on readers was exposed by openDemocracy and widely criticised. Labour’s then deputy-leader, Tom Watson, called it a “cash-for-column inches” scandal, and a “corporate fake news factory on a grand scale.” Journalists from across the political spectrum called for Osborne’s resignation.
