Fmr CNN's Zucker Plans 'Center-Right' Telegraph Against NY Times, Wash Post

Former CNN President Jeff Zucker is making his pitch for U.K.'s media giant The Telegraph despite those "slinging mud," vowing to bring a "center-right" media brand forward in the U.S. to counter the more liberal papers The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Using the Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI company, Zucker is bidding for The Telegraph, which he called "a great, iconic brand that stands for quality journalism" to the Financial Times.

Zucker said he wants to bring the Telegraph into the U.S. market to counter the Times and the Post, two notoriously liberal-leaning outlets compared to the traditionally conservative Telegraph.

"We believe there is real potential," Zucker told the Financial Times, to "establish the Telegraph as a much more global media brand. We've thought for a long time that the real gap in the U.S. marketplace was a very strong center-right media brand."

The United Kingdom's conservative members of parliament are concerned the British publications The Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, more aligned with their party, would be bought out by foreign, if not globalist, influencers like Zucker, particularly since the RedBird IMI is funded by the United Arab Emirates, according to the report.

"It is little more than a statement of fact to say that the Telegraph and the Spectator are great British institutions; they should not be controlled by a foreign power," former Telegraph editor Charles Moore told the Daily Mail.

"'After more than 40 years' friendly acquaintance with the readers of all our titles, I feel quite confident in predicting that they would not forgive any government which let them go."

But Zucker is trying to convince the U.K. government "that we're prepared to make commitments that should assuage anyone's concerns," he told the Financial Times.

When the Telegraph failed to pay its debts and was seized by the Lloyds Banking Group, RedBird IMI stepping in to repay the loans "in full" and take over the publisher.

Now Zucker is decrying competing media companies for "slinging mud" against their bid.

"There's a reason that people are slinging mud and throwing darts — because they want to own these assets," Zucker told the Financial Times. "And they have their own media assets to try to hurt us."

Former President Donald Trump has long decried Zucker as an anti-Trump media executive when he was at CNN, which he ridiculed as the Clinton News Network and a "fake news" media power weaponized against him and conservatives in the U.S.

"People throwing stones now tried to approach us before to see if we would work with them on this bid," Zucker continued. "So let's just be clear about that. We were fine in the eyes of our competitors before we were trying to do this on our own."

Zucker is vowing to maintain the Telegraph's editorial independence through an advisory board and not change the management or editorial team at either the Telegraph or the Spectator magazine.

"We feel confident that with those moves that there should be no question about the editorial independence of the Telegraph or Spectator," Zucker told the Financial Times.

"I've spent 35 years running or supervising news organizations, and there's nothing I understand more than editorial independence. I have staked my reputation and legacy on not allowing editorial interference."

But Trump has long argued to the contrary with Zucker.

And the former editor above is concerned the UAE will be effectively buying British media through the RedBird IMI ties to Sheikh Mansour, the deputy prime minister of the UAE.

"Imagine that the Telegraph (or any other British national newspaper, Left, Right or center) were nationalized by the British government," Moore warned to the Daily Mail. "There would, to put it mildly, be a stink. It would be seen as an unprecedented power grab by the state against the freedom of the press.

"Luckily – though the freedom of the press is never completely secure even here in Britain – newspaper nationalization is seen as beyond the pale.

"Yet now, perhaps the week after next, the nationalization of a British national newspaper seems possible. It would be nationalization by a country which does not have press freedom."

The UAE-tied funds would be used to exert influence over the U.K., Moore argued to the Daily Mail, because "all states, particularly authoritarian ones, will sacrifice the interests of others if it thinks its own interests are threatened."

Of particular concern to Moore was UAE's ties to China.

"There is a reason why they do not go big on press freedom: they fear freedom in all its forms and close it down if it causes trouble," Moore warned to the Daily Mail. "They could do that to a newspaper."