George Osborne, editor of the Evening Standard. Image, YouTube, fair use.
In the wake of our damaging revelations about a lucrative “money can’t buy’ deal with Uber and Google, George Osborne’s London Evening Standard has denied it has ever put a price on independent news and comment. But Green Party leader Caroline Lucas says the Standard’s claim never to have “crossed the line” dividing editorial from advertising does “not stack up” after she examined coverage from a paid-for news deal with Swiss agri-chem giant, Syngenta.
Osborne, the former chancellor of the exchequer who took over as editor of the London free-sheet last year, is facing calls to resign, and for the paper to be banned from valued distribution points outside London’s huge underground tube network.
