Evening Standard urged to declare Osborne's job with Uber shareholder National Union of Journalists’ ethics council said that the Evening Standard should note Osborne’s role at BlackRock alongside newspaper and online articles it publishes about Uber. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
The Evening Standard should declare that George Osborne has a job with a major shareholder in Uber when the newspaper publishes articles about the taxi company, according to the chair of the National Union of Journalists’ ethics council.
The Evening Standard ran a front page story about Uber’s London ban on Monday and also published an editorial that described removing its licence to operate in the city as “shutting out the future”.
Osborne, the editor of the Standard, is paid £650,000 a year by fund manager BlackRock for working four days a month as an adviser. BlackRock has a stake in Uber worth an estimated £500m.
Chris Frost, chair of the NUJ’s ethics councils, said that the Evening Standard should note Osborne’s role at BlackRock alongside newspaper and online articles it publishes about Uber. The publication did not mention Osborne’s job with BlackRock in Monday’s newspaper.
Frost said: “He [Osborne] ought to make it clear to readers that he has a financial interest in what he is writing about. My advice to editors and journalists would be always to declare your interests.”
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of Osborne, the Evening Standard, BlackRock or Uber. A spokesperson for the Evening Standard did not respond to requests for comment.
The editorial in Monday’s Evening Standard criticised Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, for the decision not to renew Uber’s licence to operate in London.
It said: “Mr Khan has taken that licence away and to give it back, even with tough conditions, will be a hard sell to the comrades and cabbies. It is hard to escape the conclusion that he has put his own journey to the top of the Labour party ahead of the journeys of millions of citizens he was elected to represent. London’s future clearly comes second to his own.”
The article is also critical of Uber, saying its corporate governance is “weak”, checks on drivers could be improved, and the company’s cooperation with the police should be better.
However, it added: “But all those things could have been demanded from Uber as a condition for renewing its licence rather than as an excuse for taking it away.”
source:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/ ... dApp_Tweet
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