Guardian News and Media has accused News UK chief executive Mike Darcey of using “flawed data to inform flawed arguments” when he criticised the group’s business model yesterday.

In a speech which largely dealt with future business models for professional journalism Darcey was dismissive of the free online approach pursued by the two most popular UK newspaper websites: Mail Online and The Guardian.

Darcey said he doubted whether Mail Online would ever be profitable and said: “It is largely a redistributor, rather than a generator, copying and re-writing content from social media sites, and from other traditional news outlets…”