Backlash after Leftie (with no TV experience) is appointed economics editor of ITV
FOR someone who normally has so many opinions on so many subjects, Noreena Hertz was being unusually quiet yesterday.
Her Twitter feed, often a hotbed of her and other people’s views on the latest right- on political issues, remained inactive.
Nor were there any new pictures of her standing up for migrants; only recently she posted a photo of herself holding up a placard reading ‘Refugees – my home is their home’.
The reason for this uncharacteristic period of silence is that she was unveiled yesterday as ITV’s new economics editor, an appointment said to have left staff at the broadcaster in revolt.
For one thing, the 48-year-old Left-wing academic has no background as a journalist.
And her new colleagues are perplexed by the arrival of someone with such controversial political views – she has denounced Brexit, accused the Tories of leading an ‘assault on the poor’ and claimed democracy is being undermined by powerful global corporations – at a time when the news will be dominated by stories with important economic slants, such as the EU referendum.
As the wife of the BBC’s politically correct former director of television Danny Cohen – who quit six months ago after becoming embroiled in two of the corporation’s most toxic rows – Miss Hertz does have some experience of the world of broadcasting.
But one on-screen ITV reporter said: ‘The newsroom is horrified. She’s not an economist at all.’ Another said: ‘ She’s just a self-publicist.’
A third said: ‘On Twitter she follows all the usual Lefties like Alastair Campbell, Russell Brand and Polly Toynbee but not the International Monetary Fund or the Bank of England.’
Others said they felt ‘insulted’ by the appointment of a media personality who will ‘ make the news rather than report on it’, while some have even claimed that producers could refuse to work with her.
One journalist at the broadcaster, who did not want to be named, told
‘The newsroom is horrified’
the Mail that bosses seem more obsessed with hiring high profile names – having already poached political editor Robert Peston and Newsnight’s Allegra Stratton from the BBC – than trying to improve the quality of journalism.
They said: ‘Our disquiet is that they have gone for a personality with no journalistic background or experience. There seems to be an obsession with getting column inches in papers about those talking heads on the programme rather than being admired for our journalism, dedication and hard work. The concern is that she will or could interpret data with a Left-wing perspective or view.’
Miss Hertz’s lack of experience was reportedly clear to see, with her attempts at packaging a TV news report during her trial being branded ‘painful’ by those she worked with.
Ambitious and glamorous, Miss Hertz has been at the centre of a group of powerful figures at the top of British broadcasting for several years, ever since Mr Cohen – seven years her junior – emerged as the head of BBC3, the youth focused channel, nine years ago.
Invitations to dinner parties the childless couple throw at their home in Primrose Hill, North London, have always been highly prized among their guests drawn from impeccable luvvie circles.
When she and Mr Cohen finally married after a lengthy engagement in 2012, actress Rachel Weisz, the wife of James Bond star Daniel Craig, was a bridesmaid and art tycoon Charles Saatchi and his then wife Nigella Lawson were among the guests.
But then they are a couple who know everybody. Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, a contemporary at £ 24,000- a- year Westminster School, and his wife Miriam are also friends.
Before the 2010 election, Miss Hertz put her name to a roundrobin letter to The Guardian describing the Liberal Democrats as ‘today’s change-makers’ while the Conservatives were ‘opposed to the deep democratic reforms the country needs’. The opportunity to ‘reshape politics must be seized’, declared the letter.
So there was no surprise when last year Cohen was revealed to be behind another round-robin letter, this one about the corporation’s future and signed by an eclectic collection of highly paid BBC performers.
The letter was sent to David Cameron warning him that Government plans to change the BBC would damage Britain. The suggestion was that the driving force behind the letter was Miss Hertz. She is expected to resign her position as director of Warner Music Group to take up her role at ITV, but remains a director of several companies, including Danno Media which she runs with her husband.
He, in turn, is joining the company that owns Warner Music as head of its new entertainment division. Miss Hertz, a fearsomely accomplished networker, is the daughter of Israeli immigrants who found success in London’s Carnaby Street in the 1960s.
After growing up in East Finchley, North London, she took her A-levels at 16 before going on to University College, London, to study Marxist economics. At only 19 she had moved to America to do a masters’ degree in business.
In 1991 she helped Russia set up its post-Communist stock exchange in St Petersburg and was later listed by Management Today listed her among its top 100 women under 35 to watch. She turned up at protests against the G8 in Genoa, Italy in 2001, and joined a protest at the World Economic Forum in snowy Davos. Her book The Silent Takeover is an influential text for anticapitalist protesters.
On her website, she describes how The Observer named her ‘one of the world’s leading thinkers’ and Vogue has described her as ‘one of the world’s most inspiring women’. She calls herself a ‘renowned economist and strategic thinker with an impressive track record in predicting global trends’.
Others have been less kind. A Sunday Times reviewer described her 2001 book, Global Capitalism And The Death Of Democracy, as ‘one long whinge, full of hackneyed observations’, which ‘reads like a 212-page Guardian editorial’.
And Jeremy Clarkson claimed she was a Marxist – something she angrily denied (that’s the same Clarkson, you will recall, who was sacked by Danny Cohen for punching a Top Gear producer).
Until 2014 she was a director at the Institute for Public Policy Research, often described as Tony Blair’s favourite think-tank.
Last night Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘I’m worried about her politics of the hard Left. As we’ve seen around the world, all that socialism ever brings the people is an equal share of misery. It’s interesting that ITV have gone for an economics editor with [those] politics.’
Simon Albury, chairman of the Campaign for Broadcasting Equality, said: ‘It is a very brave decision to appoint someone with no experience. ITN, which is regulated by Ofcom, must be very confident that her political background will not influence the way she reports.’ Additional reporting: Tom Kelly, Sam Creighton and Laura Lambert