Independent media columnist Stephen Glover signaled his defiance today amid claims that he came under pressure from the paper’s owners to stop writing about the Telegraph Group.
Glover’s acerbic comments about the Daily Telegraph are believed to have prompted a critical article on the front page of the Daily Telegraph business section which speculated that the Independent had lost £102 million over the last eight years.
It has also been reported that Telegraph Group chief executive Murdoch MacLennan asked Independent chief executive Ivan Fallon to cease Glover’s attacks on the Telegraph.
Today Glover wrote in his column: “There has been an extraordinary rumour doing the rounds that I have been forbidden from writing about the Telegraph Group, a subject normally quite close to my heart.
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“Let me assure readers that there is no truth in this amazing notion. I shall certainly be writing about the Telegraph titles, when and as the occasion arises, and none of the familiar cast of much-loved characters from those two great organs will ever be banished from these pages.”
It is not the first time that Glover has had to fight for his editorial independence.
In February last year, Glover walked from his job as media columnist for The Spectator rather than have a column about job cuts at the Daily Telegraph censored by then editor Boris Johnson. He was reinstated eight months later, only to leave again in January this year.
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The Daily Telegraph and Spectator are both owned by the Barclay brothers.
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