The leading Brussels based publication “Politico” appears to have taken umbrage with the editorial practices of EU Reporter, and has fired off two highly critical articles in the past week, one criticising EU Reporter’s links with the Chinese company Huawei and the China People’s Daily, and a second disparaging the information distributed by EU Reporter as “ill-disguised lobbying”.
The ongoing attacks have been robustly defended by the editor and owner of EU Reporter, Colin Stevens, who is also the President of the Brussels Press Club.
Has Politico gone too far by the “pot calling the kettle black” with its ongoing attacks on EU Reporter?
Their latest article descends to the level of “News of the World” gutter innuendo with its patronising mockery of Stevens’ “soft” Welsh accent. Really? This is not the kind of offensive irrelevant cynical deprecatory insinuation that one expects from a respectable publication.
Politico was once an exciting addition to the media market in Brussels. It appears now to be feeding its new corporate owners’ desire to eliminate competition, through abusing its already dominant position.
But could this behaviour backfire on the publication’s readership? It is an often quoted adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity; by drawing attention to a competitor in this way, perhaps Politico risks stimulating exactly the wrong kind of effect they are actually trying to achieve.
