Is the Mail getting nerves over Telegraph sale?

Is the Daily Mail getting nervous about a rival publishing giant sneaking in and buying the Telegraph titles from under its nose? A hit-job on Germany’s Axel Springer group at the weekend would suggest so.

The Mail on Sunday, whose readers are ordinarily not much concerned with the HR policies of German publishing groups, this weekend set its chief attack dog Glen Owen, nominally the paper’s political editor, on the Springer group as it emerged it could rival the Mail’s bid for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

Under the headline “German publishing group that supports a united Europe launches bid to buy The Telegraph”, Owen told readers how Springer “backs a United Europe” and enlisted former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith to rail against “the prospect of a pro-Brussels media giant owning The Telegraph”. The publisher, it warned, required its employees “to sign a written commitment to principles”.

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Which is true – except it only applies to employees in Germany (UK staff of titles such as Politico do not sign it) and none of those principles refer to a “United Europe”. The five “Essentials”, written by founder Springer himself in 1967, relate to freedom, supporting the state of Israel, backing the transatlantic alliance, upholding a free market economy and rejecting political extremism, all things that the Mail would presumably agree with.

The hit job shows the nervousness of Mail bosses as the interminable process of selling the Telegraph titles rumbles on. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has now given permission for RedBird IMI, the owners of the Telegraph, to sell security over its newspaper to Mail owners DMGT for £500 million.

Earlier this month Nandy said that she had issued a public interest intervention notice over concerns that the purchase warranted investigation on public interest and competition grounds. The media regulator Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority must report back to her by June 10.
Mail bosses must hope Telegraph sales hold up in the meantime before they can come in and presumably start merging vast swathes of the businesses. At least the Telegraph’s sales are still publicly available. Rival publisher Reach has just announced it will no longer publish ABC figures (the newspaper industry’s official auditor) so people don’t know, presumably, just how quickly Daily Express readers are dying off.