Selling a telegraph is no easy matter. The mainstream media that the right exploits most threatens us all | Jane Martinson

DDoes anyone, outside its former and current staff, still care about the Daily Telegraph? The thorny, long-running saga over who owns the Telegraph Media Group, which last week returned to the desk of the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, may leave Guardian readers agitated, but it touches on the heart of the media industry’s transparency and independence.

American private equity group RedBird Capital, which Finally submitted Details of the £500m takeover plans it submitted to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last week, two years after it emerged as a potential buyer, are a key part of an increasingly globalized and opaque media business. Its bid links the 170-year-old newspaper, owned by a retired British colonel, to West Coast tech billionaires and some of the most well-known news organizations in the United States.

By publicly supporting the idea of ​​creating a “New York Times for the Right,” Red Bird founder Jerry Cardinale also sought to place The Telegraph at the forefront of efforts to shift the mainstream media narrative from an overly liberal viewpoint to the right. Secrecy and political influence have long been a factor in media ownership – but unlike the previous owners of The Telegraph, the Red Bird Consortium appears to have the money to change all of our lives, not just ours.

Nandy inherited this mess from the last Conservative government. RedBird’s original bid as an independent entity RedBird IMI caused a political storm: 75% of this amount was paid by International Media Investments (IMI), a company owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, owner of Manchester City and a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, which caused a political storm. The Gulf state’s terrible record on press freedom made its land grab for the former Tory Bible an embarrassment to the then government.

So it would be understandable that Nandy, closely watched by Downing Street supervisors keen to avoid further rejection of the cash-rich Gulf state, simply wanted to move forward without further regulatory reviews in the public interest. But this would be a huge mistake. For reasons of editorial independence and control, Nandy should call for a further and immediate regulatory review of this transaction. If it succeeds, Red Bird must commit to maintaining its editorial independence, perhaps through its own board of directors. The past history of such councils suggests that such commitments do not always guarantee independence from royal interference, but they are a start.

There are still questions about how the new Telegraph ownership will work. With IMI, RedBird’s main backer, having to limit its stake in Telegraph to 15% under the new foreign state intervention regime, RedBird will become what it calls the “sole controlling owner”. Cardinale didn’t use the word “owner” to describe his fund’s debt-backed stake, but who is the owner then? Other minority investors include a billionaire Leonard Blavatnik and the Daily Mail Groupabout 10% for each.

Some of these questions were raised in a letter to Nandy by a cross-party group of parliamentarians this summer. They have so far gone unanswered.

RedBird has much bigger fish to fry. She knows all about protesting editorial influence, even if it’s one step removed from it. It is the second-biggest investor in this summer’s mega deal – Paramount Skydance’s new $8bn (£6bn) media company, which brought together Hollywood film studios and popular US news channel CBS.

Paramount, led by David Ellison (son of Oracle founder Larry and a big Trump fan) and backed by Red Bird, caused outrage after seizing CBS News and appointing Barry Weiss, the woman who famously left the New York Times to suppress it, as its president. The group also wants to buy Warner Bros., which would add CNN to its list of holdings.

CBS and the Telegraph are completely different media beasts. If CBS was known as the “Tiffany Network” because of its perceived quality, the once-mighty Telegraph Channel, starved of funding and support initially by debt-ridden owners and then in an ongoing ownership impasse, was in danger of becoming the Ratner of broad titles.

Cardinale made encouraging noises about the future of the title earlier this year when he first floated the idea of ​​a “New York Times Right,” a paper in which Pulitzer Prize-winning news coverage would coexist with hugely popular recipe apps and games.

This slogan has “the credibility of a peanut,” media analyst Alice Enders told me. However, Cardinale partially fulfilled that promise last week when he appointed Matthew Garrahan, the award-winning FT for 27 years, as chief executive. RedBird Operating PartnerResponsible for “News and Entertainment”. Garrahan’s arrival signals a renewed focus on trusted journalism for a newspaper in need of a new strategy, with an old and moribund readership and little loyalty among digital subscribers if decline rates are to be believed.

Although the talk may be big, the huge investment may be contrary to the well-known behavior of private equity groups. The fear is that RedBird will follow other media owners, from Richard Desmond to Reach, and cut costs and journalism in order to improve profits.

The UK government is unlikely to care much about the future of the telegraph. There is precedence for Labor governments to treat the newspaper as an internecine struggle for the other side. The Blair administration allowed the Barclay brothers to buy the newspaper group without conducting a full public interest investigation in 2004.

The world is different now. Newspapers are bought for influence, and the ideological and financial ends are as old as print. But in a time of existential crisis caused by disinformation and bot-generated bullshit, independent, ethical journalism is more important than ever, and full transparency is the best place to start.