Talk:Frank Hester

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This sentence in the article is sensationalised and is not relevant to Frank Hester: "In April 2023, Abbott was forced to retract and disassociate herself from remarks she had made about Irish, Jewish, Travellers and red haired people! As a result, she was suspended from the Labour Parliamentary Party."

It should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jusefmusef (talk • contribs) 09:51, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. 79.77.92.248 (talk) 10:06, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed and boldly reverted. Nedrutland (talk) 10:41, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Sources for comments reported in main news sources

It's strange that this article is locked, but here are further sources that someone might be able to incorporate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68539981

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-donor-frank-hester-diane-abbott-0vcbqg8n0

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/11/frank-hester-diane-abbot-conservative-party-donor/

https://news.sky.com/story/major-tory-donor-frank-hester-apologises-to-diane-abbott-over-reprehensible-and-revolting-comments-13092903

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/20/one-of-tories-biggest-ever-donors-frank-hester-profited-from-135m-of-nhs-contracts — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a00:23ee:1370:e502:84d9:edde:9dd0:ee47 (talk • contribs) 12:10, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

If you check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_Hester&action=edit there's a link there to "Submit an edit request". The Subject is currently high profile in the media which would explain the semi-protection to stop vandalism. Wikizashi (talk) 08:11, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 March 2024

Biography. Ref 10 regarding Diane Abbott.

In April 2023, Abbott was forced to retract and disassociate herself from remarks she had made about Irish, Jewish, Travellers and red haired people! As a result, she was suspended from the Labour Parliamentary Party.[10]

THIS NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. THIS WIKI PAGE IS ABOUT FRANK HESTER, AND HIS ACTIONS. THIS IS NOT DIANE ABBOTT'S PAGE AND HER ACTIONS. Akanwarrior (talk) 09:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely support this statement. 79.77.92.248 (talk) 10:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

 Already done
— Urro^{[talk][edits]} ⋮ 18:05, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Separate page for scandal over Abbott remarks

This is becoming a huge story and taking up a lot of the current news cycle - I believe it should be given its own page, titled something like "2024 Conservative Party donor remarks scandal". What do we think? Ninehundreddollarydoos (talk) 21:04, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I have just updated the article to attempt to describe the events over the past few days, specifically the flow of responses and change in tone, from Conservative ministers and Downing street either staying silent or speaking out in defence whilst opposition politicians from across the spectrum calling out the comments as racist, to Conservative ministers changing tone and calling such comments racist, but refusing to give back donations.

I hope it gives a fuller impression without needing a new page. I'm not sure if there is much left in events, it seems to have calmed down yet is still current. If this story evolves further, I suspect it would be better to spin off its own page. Montezuma69 (talk) 20:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

2017 comments by Abbott somehow relevant to Hester's 2019 comments??

I recently reverted the following text:

Hester made his private criticism of Abbott in 2019, which had come in the aftermath of the era where Abbott had mis-spoken, saying it would cost £300,000 to fund 10,000 new police officers.

The reason for removing the text was that it is irrelevant to Hester as the source used does not make a connection between Abbott's 2017 comments and Hester's 2019 comments. One of our editors believes there is a connection, but without a source this is synthesis and original research. The editor's opinion is that "It puts in context the why Hester of Irish heritage had been rude about Abbott in 2019". That editor reinserted the text into the article after it was removed, breaching the policy on BLP's which states "When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first". Burrobert (talk) 05:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

As no relevance has been established, I have removed mention of Abbott's words two years before. Nedrutland (talk) 09:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Unless reliable evidence is provided that undeniably link Abbott's 2017 comments to Hester's 2019 comments any discussion of such could be pure fabrication and should be treated as conjecture. Montezuma69 (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Q. How reliable is the Guardian when reporting on Tory donors? A. About as reliable as the Sun reporting on Liverpool supporters.

Guardian newspaper status should be changed to unreliable when reporting on Tory donors. They have offered no evidence the statements from 2019, were by Hester. It is an unqualified unsubstantiated claim robustly rejected by Hester and more importantly by his lawyers.

Guardian claimed in 2024, Tory donations come from TPP, yet in 2023 they reported the remarks that TPP is apolitical and donations are made by Hester! Jaymailsays (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Has Hester or his lawyers claimed somewhere that he didn't make the remarks? If so, what remarks was he apologising for? Regarding the donations, the 2024 article does say "from his company", while its 2023 article quoted the company as saying the donations "should have been made by Frank Hester in his personal capacity rather than through the business. Mr Hester repaid the company in full". Presumably, this means that the company did initially make the donations, but realised this breached its political neutrality and so Hester paid it the money it had donated. Don't think this is a big enough issue to affect the Guardian's reliability, even in the restricted area of Tory party donors. Burrobert (talk) 13:01, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

This is exactly right. Guardian is gold standard RS. Nobody at all (including Hester) is disputing that he made some comments (he called them "rude"), so we don't "alleged" every time comments are mentioned. The only thing secondary sources are adding "reported" or "alleged" for is the detailed content of the comments, so we should keep the caveat when we mention the specific words of course. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:41, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jaymailsays, what you say aligns with WP:GUARDIAN which says that although there is a consensus that it is generally reliable, Some editors believe The Guardian is biased or opinionated for politics.

Also, The Guardian often boasts on it's website's frequent funding nag text inserts that: The Guardian has spent the past 13 years tirelessly investigating the shortcomings of the Tories in office – austerity, Brexit, partygate, cronyism, the Truss debacle and the individual failings of ministers who behave as if the rules don’t apply to them. Our work has resulted in resignations, apologies and policy corrections. Our continued revelations about the conveyor belt of Tory dysfunction are the latest in a long line of important scoops. And with an election just round the corner, we won’t stop now. It’s crucial that we can all make informed decisions about who is best to lead the UK. Will you invest in the Guardian this year?. So it is clearly openly concentrating on targeting the Tories.

WP:RS/QUOTE says of such sources: Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion as they may misquote or quote out of context. In such cases, look for neutral corroboration from another source. We know Hester's lawyers have complained that this has happened in this case.

For these reasons, it's probably best to avoid using The Guardian to support anything related to politics, especially in relation to WP:BLP-sensitive stuff. And we can be sure that if claims are both verifiable and noteworthy, that they will appear in reliable and less biased sources that do not refer back to the The Guardian's carefully crafted "revelations". -- DeFacto (talk). 14:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you @DeFacto, however, using an alternative source is mostly impossible because only the Guardian had/has access to the alleged scoop. Both Hester and his lawyers agree the comments that he made in private in 2019 were rude. The person who leaked the story, presumably sat on it for five years, unless the Guardian waited until the large Tory donations were made public.

That said, unless there is a recording, it is one word v another. Jaymailsays (talk) 16:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jaymailsays, however, the lawyers are reported as saying the remarks were distorted and taken out of context in the report. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:32, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a complete misreading of our reliability policy. Bias does not equal unreliability. The Telegraph, Times and other reliable newspapers again and again editorialised against the dangers of a Corbyn government but that doesn't make us stop using it as an RS on him, which is exactly comparable. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:43, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley, as The Guardian is known for its bias against Tories, it should not be assumed that its reporting will be flawless for an allegation it makes against a Tory supporter, especially as the content of its original article has been said to challenged by Hester as being distorted and taken out of context. But because neither the full detail of what was said nor its context is known or independently reported in any other source, we have no way of substantiating or balancing the POV between sources. For that reason, we need to be very careful in how we attribute the allegations and the weight we give to them. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:29, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@DeFacto The quandary is that if the Guardian produce another allegation against Hester, without independent corroboration, we can't ignore it. Publishing their allegation, gives it enough weight, and so the cycle continues unless another reliable source obtains access to the material. Jaymailsays (talk) 19:03, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jaymailsays, perhaps then we should treat The Guardian account as a primary source, and only report it through the eyes of the secondary sources that reported it. That way we can give due weight to our coverage based on the weight given in the secondary sources. We should also be careful to attribute it to The Guardian, and not put it into Wiki's voice or into that of the secondary sources. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:41, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@DeFacto We can try that but pay walls for secondary sources can be frustrating, in this particular scenario. Jaymailsays (talk) 19:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

There are several issues raised here, some of them are effectively non-issues. I think the debate about The Guardian and bias is a red herring.

The Guardian and recent events - no further evidence needed, but should be provided should it be reported at some point

The Guardian published the investigative report with extensive quotations on 11 March 2024. Although he means of the The Guardian coming into knowledge or possession of a record of the conversation are not specifically revealed, this is often the case in investigative journalism.

Further evidence, and the lack of a transcript or video recording or secondary source becomes a bit of a non-issue considering the following press statement by Hester himself that stands as an admission of culpability, available to various major news agencies and news outlets. This was also published on X. This was published almost immediately.

"Frank Hester accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbot in a private meeting several years ago but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin. The Guardian is right when it quotes Frank saying he abhors racism, not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970’s. He rang Diane Abbott twice today to try to apologise directly for the hurt he has caused her, and is deeply sorry for his remarks. He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a poison which has no place in public life."

Most news outlets reported parts of this statement (including The Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, etc.. The fullest copy printed was by the Associated Press (AP) as follows:

“Frank Hester accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting several years ago but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor color of skin,” the statement said. “He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a pison which has no place in public life.”

As for notability and widespread reporting, either identical of slightly modified versions can be found in almost all of the British outlets (including The Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Times, The Guardian, etc) as well as the major press agencies (Reuters, Associated Press (as above)).

Amongst those who haven't published the statement in part or in whole,the Agence France Press (AFP) and Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) (which to the best of my knowledge haven't covered the story). The New York Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitungeitung and Die Welt cover the story, but without discussion of Hester's press release statement.

I have access to all the above sources and speak multiple languages in order to access these claims

Whilst Hester refutes claims that he is racist, at no point has Frank Hester denied making the alleged comments reported.

Hester's alleged comments printed in The Guardian could be said to have been widely read as being accurate. No major news outlets nor Conservative Party claimed that Hester did not make the alleged comments. The were addressed by many senior politicians as being accurate (including Sunak). So the debate isn't whether he said those things, but rather, were they racist. Possibly conjecture, but it would seem highly probable that a major Tory donor would be in communication with the government.

I have seen almost no major news source or agency question the reliability of the The Guardian or it's investigative reporting in this story, probably because Hester's press statement acts as an admission.

Investigative journalism and breaking news

As discussed above, The Guardian's report was subsequently quoted and reported by press agencies and outlets, even overseas, and The Guardian has been mentioned in almost all subsequent reporting. Wikipedia is right to do so too; even if the original source of investigative journalism was a WP red listed publication, in such a situation it would be right to include the original source as a reference, before ideally using more reliable sources subsequently.

Bias and reliability

I feel assumptions (which are different from bias again) are being made here that bias equals unreliability, and that is categorically untrue.

Things that make a source or article unreliable include presentation of facts that are wrong, or are out of date and no longer correct, or facts presented are inaccurate, i.e. facts may be largely correct, but contain errors.

Bias concerns perspective, opinion and POV.

Obviously a totally unbiased, 100% reliable source would always be best, but I think a totally unbiased, totally reliable and completely verifiable source of information is an ideal that doesn't exist. A heavily biased article that presents accurate, reliable facts is better than a minimally biased article that is unreliable (i.e. wrong and inaccurate). I say minimally biased, because as far as bias is concerned, everything and everyone contains bias, conscious or unconscious.

WP does not preclude the use of even heavily biased sources provided that the information provided and contained in the article isn't wrong, out of date or inaccurate, as long as bias, e.g. opinion, is not presented as fact. In some circumstances, WP allows for presentation of opinions, provided those opinions are not presented as facts, and the overall article is well balanced by presentation of opinion or thought presented from other sources.

WP sensibly considers The Guardian blogs and op-eds differently to news reporting and investigative journalism. The Guardian is more clear than most in labelling opinion pieces as such, something many news outlets do not do, or do not do well. It's a personal annoyance is the number of outlets who do not make it clear that they are reading OP-eds, as are the number of people who read OP-eds and assume they're gospel truth and news reporting.

News sources and political reporting

For disclosure, I'm a doctor (of medicine) and work in medical science, particularly analysis and evaluation of clinical trials, pharmacology, PK/PD, etc, but I started in journalism and foreign affairs. Bias and assumptions exist in everything, everywhere. Maybe to a lesser degree and looking for bias for very specific reasons, but it exists even in the hard sciences. In medical studies, bias is assumed as existing, thus there are attempts to control for it and evaluate it's effect and put it under scrutiny. In large part, the scrutiny is ultimately not to present bias, but to determine whether the data or information produced can be considered reliably accurate or not of the true effect.

Politics is far from medical science. Politics is based on real world events and facts, juxtaposed with ideology, hopes and fears, opinion, personal convictions and personal gain. Acknowledging that means being aware that there are and always will always be biases.

Take the current scenario (some of this is conjecture, but it serves as an example):

If The Telegraph and The Times chose to only publish good news about Hester, despite being aware of bad news, this is an example of coverage bias. Equally, if The Guardian only wrote bad news stories about Hester, whilst having enough information write good news stories, this would also be coverage bias, just in different ideological directions. Most news outlets and publications do this to a certain extent, thus it pays to read from a variety of sources where possible.

Perhaps other outlets knew of Hester's alleged comments and TPP meeting, yet only The Guardian wrote an article. It might be considered that the ideologically right or centre-right publications chose not to publish on ideological grounds, or perhaps a story had been written in house, but wasn't published (i.e. was spiked) on ideological grounds therefore perhaps being guilty of gatekeeper bias.

Statement or tonality bias could be said to exist in almost every article with any sort of slant or POV. The press agencies like AP, AFP, PA, DFA, Reuters aim to report with as little opinion and bias as possible, yet as previously said, bias exists everywhere.

Given that bias is everywhere and the major publications are reporting from a certain POV or political disposition, it's completely unrealistic and simplistic to consider reporting and scrutiny of political parties (including donors) is only reliable where the reporting publication is ideologically aligned to that party, e.g. The Times, being of centre-right disposition, reporting on the Conservatives; or, The Guardian, being of centre-left disposition, reporting on the Labour party.

In a scenario where only ideological-aligned outlets were reliable, there would be more bias, with potentially more implications to reliability and accurate reporting. Coverage bias and gatekeeper bias could be left uncontrolled and unchallenged. Newspapers could be deemed reliable to report and choose only to publish good articles that compliment their ideologically-aligned parties. Who could reliably report on the Green party?

It's an obvious assumption, but one I'm happy to believe is largely true: the best sources of criticism are typically those that do not align with your ideology or POV. They are highly unlikely to be major sources of gatekeeping bias. While there may be statement bias, provided that the facts reported remain reliable and opinion is not presented as fact (as WP acknowledges) and opinion is not report as fact on WP, they are considered reliable sources of information.

Note that ideologically opposed publications are far more likely to produce investigative reporting on the party of opposing ideology than publications aligned with them. Without this, and without media balance, a great deal of information would never make it to the public domain.

As a personal method of informing myself and writing, particularly when I am in doubt of reliability, I will read from as many sources as possible. I will check the press agencies. Depending on location, I will read all of the broadsheets, and being multilingual, I will read across multiple languages. At the end of the process, it becomes more clear, what is reproduced and reported across sources, the variance and disparity between sources, and whether or not presentation of facts varies.

RE: 2024 Reports of Tory donations come from TPP, yet in 2023 they reported the remarks that TPP is apolitical and donations are made by Hester

Hester is widely reported as being the sole owner and controller of TPP (see The Telegraph below). Hester is ultimately the only person with ownership and only person with significant control of TPP, via a rather tortuous route of ownership (also see below).

Donations may have originated from TPP or Hester personally. In either scenario, Hester is ultimately in control as F X J Hester owns the entire share capital of the listed entities. I'm not interested in reading in detail, but the most recent statement (7 Dec 2023) does not list TPP Ltd as making donations of any kind.

How Frank Hester became Britain's most infamous businessman – and unlikely Tory donor (telegraph.co.uk)

THE PHOENIX PARTNERSHIP (LEEDS) LTD persons with significant control - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk)

TPP FINANCE LIMITED persons with significant control - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk)

TPPH (LEEDS) LIMITED persons with significant control - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk)

TPP GROUP LIMITED persons with significant control - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk) Montezuma69 (talk) 23:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Excellent summary of the situation. Thank you. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:54, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

@Montezuma69, an interesting read, you totally miss the point though. Sure the original The Guardian primary source has become notable through muliple secondary sources, sure it may well be reliable (I agree that bias does not necessarily mean unreliable), but the main point is whether the primary source adequately and fully portrays the context. We know that Hester apologised, but we also know that he said the remarks were distorted and taken out of context. This adds up to a very strong requirement (per WP:BLP) to be very careful to describe the allegations in the voice of The Guardian - including carefully differentiating between what are verbatim quotes in the primary source and what is editorialisation inserted between them by The Guardian, and any subsequent embellishments in the voice of the secondary source adding them, and to keep it clear that as the context is unknown, conclusions are all unsubstantiated POV. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:12, 21 March 2024 (UTC)