The Stage

ACE apologises after ‘mistakenly’ announcing media partnership with News International

Published Thursday 27 January 2011 at 13:50 by Alistair Smith

Arts Council England has made an embarrassing climb-down over the announcement of a proposed media partnership with Rupert Murdoch’s News International, after questions were raised over the appropriateness of such an arrangement.

Late yesterday (Wednesday, January 26) afternoon a news piece appeared on the Arts Council England website announcing that it had entered a “partnership” with the media group, “offering arts organisations the opportunity to gain profile across their titles”.

It continued: “The partnership will include editorial content to help readers gain more of an understanding about a variety of artforms, as well as exclusive offers and promotions. We are now looking for arts organisations who would like to take advantage of this opportunity.”

ACE is a non-departmental public body - commonly known as a quango - and receives its funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The DCMS is responsible for competition issues in the media sector and its secretary of state Jeremy Hunt is currently considering a competition issue involving News Corporation - News International’s parent company - which is bidding to take over total control of broadcaster BSkyB.

After The Stage raised questions with ACE about the appropriateness of an NDPB entering into such a partnership with a commercial media group - and one that is currently being investigated by its parent ministry - ACE quickly removed the news piece from its website and issued the following statement: “The Arts Council apologises for any confusion that has been caused by its posting about News International. There was no partnership with News International and there has never been approval for a partnership between the Arts Council and News International on either side.”

This is not the first time that ACE has been forced to apologise following competition issues relating to a promotional tie-in with a private media organisation. In March 2010, ACE issued an apology after a member of staff sent out a promotional email on behalf of the independently-run Arts Professional magazine. At the time, ACE stressed that the email had been sent out in error and without the knowledge of the organisation’s media team.

A spokesperson for ACE told The Stage: “On rare occasions errors occur in all organisations. In these two isolated incidents we acted swiftly and decisively as soon as the errors had been uncovered. We take any breach of our systems and processes extremely seriously.”