Reuters has evidently seen the Kroll corporate investigators report into the leak from Telegraph Media Group of unpublished comments made by Vince Cable to its undercover reporters.
It suggests that the leak of Cable’s comments reached the BBC’s Robert Peston via News International general manager (and former Telegraph editor) Will Lewis.
They believe a Telegraph Media Group employee who went on to work at News Corp was the source of the tip-off.
This was the transcript which had business secretary Vince Cable saying he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch, and which led to him being taken off making a decision on News Corp’s BSkyB bid.
I may be missing something but I am not quite sure what the big deal about this is.
It seemed scandalous that the Telegraph had apparently censored the Cable comments from its first front page story for commercial reasons. And if it was Lewis who worked with the Telegraph whistleblower – he did everyone a great service by shedding light on this. It seems reasonable that he might have felt The Times or The Sun couldn’t report this themselves because they were too close to the story, so instead passed it on to his mate Peston.
If indeed that was the case. The Kroll report seems far from certain.
It should be noted that the Telegraph insists it always intended to publish Cable’s anti-Murdoch comments, but was just staggering the release of what he said.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
