Who edits the editor

The relationship between newspaper owners and editors 'take many forms and have many different dynamics'. While editors need to have complete freedom, their stance will inevitably reflect that of their proprietor. By Conor Brady

The State Papers for 1975, released at New Year, reported an interesting insight into relations, at that time, between the editors of titles at Independent Newspapers (as it then was) and the chairman and chief private shareholder, AJF O'Reilly (as he then was.)

According to a 1975 file, a British diplomat reported to his superiors that Tony O'Reilly had "ordered" his editors at a private lunch not to support in any way the public rehabilitation of Charles Haughey. Haughey had been sent into political "exile" by Taoiseach Jack Lynch after the arms trials of 1970. By 1975 he was clawing his way back into the Fianna Fáil power-structure, much to the alarm of many in the political establishment.

Lynch was viewed by O'Reilly as a thoroughly decent man, the diplomat reported. His source in this instance was not one of the editors, it appears, but a "senior journalist" within Independent Newspapers who had learned of the Chairman's supposed instruction to the editors of the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald.

That Independent Newspapers was hostile to Haughey over this period is a matter of public record. So were most of the national titles, including Fianna Fáil's own organ, the Irish Press. Thus any apparent corroboration on the basis of what appeared in the Independent titles may be of limited evidential value.

But the episode raises an interesting angle on the oft-repeated affirmation by O'Reilly that he does not interfere in the editorial policies of his newspapers and that his editors have a free hand. Here, it would seem, is a direct indication to the contrary.

I think the report needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The (relatively junior) diplomat is reporting at second hand, from someone who wasn't there, what O'Reilly is supposed to have told his editors. In the first place, I doubt that O'Reilly would ever have been clumsy to the degree that he would "order" his editors to do anything. It doesn't usually happen like that in relations between proprietors and editors. It is more a process of seeding the editors' minds with the proprietor's or publisher's policies and preferences. The message would be clear enough but it would be delivered in the form of a lateral arabesque rather than a full, frontal assault. And in this sense, by the time it reached the ears of the journalist who was the British diplomat's source it would, of course, have been reduced to more simple elements. One does not glean from the 30-year old papers whether the journalist/source approved of the newspaper group's collective policy – if one could, that might throw some light on who the journalist was. But it is clear that that the man from the embassy was delighted. If O'Reilly is going to run his newspapers this way, he observes, it is as well to see him make such a sensible start.

In the sense described above, Sir Anthony O'Reilly is absolutely truthful when he says his editors have a free hand in the content of the newspapers they edit. Editors are generally chosen because they broadly share or reflect the proprietor's/publisher's values. I did not become editor of the Irish Times in 1986 because I was seen as inimical to the aims and objectives of the Irish Times Trust. And I would not have been kept as editor for 16 years had I been shown to be subversive of those values. If the board or the proprietor/publisher chooses the right man (or woman) in the first place, there should be no need for crude interventions in the form of late-night telephone calls.

Nonetheless, I have never quite got my head around the O'Reilly insistence that Independent editors operate, as it were, like the earthly sphere, suspended in space. Editors must have a line of accountability just like anybody else. They are rarely the prime-movers or first-creators of the publications they direct. (The excellent Vincent Browne of this parish is somewhat of an exception.) They have a set of responsibilities to the publication's various stakeholders – its readers, its advertisers, its staff, its shareholders (if any), its suppliers and not least, to its owner or owners. Giving editors a free hand in all matters can be presented as a virtue. But taken to its ultimate logic it must have a great potential for ill.

Relations between editors and proprietors take many forms and have many different dynamics. Each one seems to have define its own, unique parameters. One of the most remarked-upon editor-publisher relationships was that between Washington Post publisher, Kay Graham and the newspaper's long-serving editor, Ben Bradlee. They generated a force-field that brought their newspaper to the front-rank of US publishing and in the process brought down a dishonest President. But when each published their memoirs in later years, it was almost impossible to accept that they were writing about the same organisation. Perceptions, perspectives and recollections differed hugely between the two books.

I see no reason why Sir Anthony O'Reilly should not expect his editors to know his mind, to support his ambitions and to seek to advance his views. He is effectively the owner. Independent News and Media is his creation, more than that of any other living individual. And I see no reason why he – and his editors - should not acknowledge these realities.

I cite as my authority for this stance, the man who laid down the "constitution" of The Times in 1922, editor Geoffrey Dawson. In setting out the foundations of editorial independence, he conceded that in the ultimate, the newspaper is the property of the proprietor "to do with it as he wants".

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of the Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the UCD Graduate School of Business where he lectures in modern media.