Will the Express go to the editor or the pornographer? 22/5/01

MICHAEL CRICK:
Storm clouds have been gathering over Express newspapers ever since Richard Desmond bought the group last autumn. Dozens of journalists have left, many resigning in disgust, and the editors of both Express papers have been replaced, amid a climate of extreme depression. When the Sunday Express editor, Michael Pilgrim (unchecked), turned up for work yesterday, his security card was confiscated and he wasn't allowed into the building. The company describes this as leaving "by mutual consent". What happened to Michael Pilgrim will have come as no surprise given the way Richard Desmond operates. Staff at the Express told Newsnight, the two men had a blazing row last Wednesday. Then on Sunday in an internal memo Mr Pilgrim wrote detailing his complaints against Mr Desmond mysteriously found its way into the pages of a rival newspaper. In the memo, Mr Pilgrim complained to Mr Desmond: "I have been asked on several occasions to suppress evidence of wrongdoing. I have been asked to suppress stories for 'commercial reasons' which have not in the slightest benefited the newspaper. I have been under ridiculous pressure to run unjustified stories to settle scores." Pilgrim says journalists were told to find damaging stories about Conrad Black, the Telegraph proprietor, with whom Desmond had a printing dispute. And stories were expected to boost Mr Desmond's other publication, OK! magazine, according to Pilgrim's former news editor.

ALAN QUALTROUGH:
We were told that heavy political stories were rather lower down the agenda and that show business stories were to be prominent. For example, we had to be kind to David and Victoria Beckham because they were part of Mr Desmond's plans for OK!

CRICK:
When Richard Desmond took over last year, he immediately took a much closer interest than most proprietors in what his editors were printing. And he confirmed his fearsome reputation for bullying staff and coarse language. John Sweeney made a recent BBC radio documentary about Desmond.

JOHN SWEENEY:
There really is a serious culture of fear. Fleet Street is a rough old place. The stories I've been hearing are truly ghastly, out of this planet:
Richard Desmond screaming his head off at a woman, an executive, who was six months pregnant, using language which is unacceptable; people being frightened of various executives, one of whom was fired by the Express in '95 for gross professional misconduct. He was blackmailing his own boss and he was then fired. Now he's back in charge of some of the people who perhaps gave evidence against him. So there is a culture of fear there.

CRICK:
QC and former Labour MP Arthur Davidson is meant to stop any proprietorial interference as chairman of the Express independent directors. But in an extraordinary Catch 22, he says he can't examine Mr Pilgrim's complaints as he's no longer editor. We can investigate a complaint that's referred to us from an editor. I know nothing about these individual complaints. Michael Pilgrim is no longer editor, so it would hardly be appropriate for us to investigate the matter, and I would have thought it was beyond our remit anyway. We have to, and wish to investigate anything that an editor of any of the titles refers to us, and we will do so, but in this case Michael Pilgrim has not referred any matters to us.

CRICK:
And who appoints all the editors who are allowed to complain? The proprietor. Initially what concerned people about Richard Desmond was his pornography - the Fantasy TV Channel and magazines such as Asian Babes. More worrying is the claim that his porn interests led Desmond to pay £2 million to the American Mafia, though it's not suggested he knew whom he'd been dealing with. But then Lord Beaverbrook, the Express's most famous proprietor, also had questionable business interests and a tendency to interfere - a common trait among newspaper owners.

SWEENEY:
Beaverbrook intervened on the public agenda to make trouble, to poke fun at his enemies. What's happening here, according to Michael Pilgrim and others, is that stories are being killed for crude commercial reasons because they will damage Richard Desmond's other commercial interests.

CRICK:
What's most fascinating is the politics of all this. Alastair Campbell tried to recruit David Beckham and Posh Spice - both OK! magazine regulars - to the Labour cause through Richard Desmond, though they weren't interested. And so keen has Tony Blair been to keep the editorial support of Mr Desmond's papers, that he's more than once invited him round to Number Ten. Indeed, it's reported that the latest tête-à-tête between the Labour leader and the proprietor of the Express - and don't forget Asian Babes - was only three weeks ago.