Scoop? What scoop?

The Financial Times is Britain’s most serious quality broadsheet. It eschews celebrity and frippery, its news analysis is authoritative, its scope is comprehensive on the things that matter and it is more international in its coverage than any other British newspaper. But its reporting is also, for some strange reason, increasingly unreliable.

It has just completed a hat-trick of page-one bloomers. "Vodafone edges ahead in AT&T Wireless bidding" it reported on Tuesday, 17 February - a story that was already wrong before the paper hit the news stands, since an American mobile operator, Cingular, had already snatched AT&T during the night. There but for the grace of God go most newspapers - but the US company was always favourite to win and the FT had fallen for Vodafone spin.

The previous Friday the FT told us that "Buccaneer Glazer looks into bid for Man Utd" - an apparent scoop in which Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (an American football franchise), had instructed Commerzbank to examine bid possibilities for Manchester’s pride and joy. The rest of us rushed to catch up only to discover that Commerzbank knew nothing about it (and, almost two weeks later, a Glazer bid has not materialised).

Ten days ago the FT had another scoop: "Scottish & Newcastle is set to sever its industrial roots by ending a 255-year brewing tradition in Scotland and Newcastle". There was some truth in this: S&N is closing its famous Fountain brewery in the Scottish capital; but it has other brewing facilities in the city and elsewhere in Scotland. Nor has it yet decided to close its Tyne brewery (home of Newcastle Brown Ale). If it does, it will simply move production a few miles away to another brewery in Gateshead.

Some, though far from all, of these nuances were carried in the news story, but that did not stop the FT’s diary carrying a sneering and inaccurate piece that the company would no longer be entitled to call itself Scottish & Newcastle, suggesting that all that was left of its name was the ampersand.

All newspapers make mistakes but three page-one mistakes in a row is a bit much for what is meant to be the City’s bible - and the FT never put its hands up to any of them. They are also somewhat embarrassing, given that FT editor Andrew Gowers penned a signed piece in the aftermath of the Hutton Report lecturing the BBC on the need for greater accuracy.

I find these lapses strange and surprising because, in many ways, Gowers has strengthened the paper since he took over. The main section is now devoted to general news and is often more than a match for the other broadsheets. Business news is now concentrated in the second section and that is more comprehensive than ever.

But there is a tendency sometimes to push stories to their limits and beyond. It is all so unnecessary: FT readers are looking for reliability rather than sensation.

The City is awash with talk of the FT’s growing reputation for inaccuracy and it’s not doing the paper’s sales or finances any good. Pearson, its parent company, is expected to announce this week that its flagship title lost £25 million last year; and UK sales at full-rate are a mere 106,000 - down almost 15,000 on the year.

Profits will no doubt return, and some of the sales, as the stock market picks up; but it will be a long haul and some readers have gone for ever. I understand the strategy now is for the FT to get back to its knitting: business, business and more business is the new mantra.

But the paper is weighed down by too much dead wood (nobody ever leaves or gets sacked from the FT) and an editorial bureaucracy that stifles originality or flair. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the op-ed spread, populated by too many second-rate columnists and dull editorials.

There are repeated rumours that Pearson is a seller. I tend to discount them; even if it was of a mind to sell, the FT is not in the best shape to command a premium price.

• When John Whittingdale was shadow culture minister he dreamed of including a pledge in the next Tory manifesto to cut the BBC licence fee. The committee he established under former Channel Five chief David Elstein to realise this dream duly delivered on Tuesday. It proposed a substantial reduction in the BBC’s income and the phasing-out of the licence fee altogether over a decade, to be replaced with voluntary subscriptions.

But the report was toast before the ink had a chance to dry. Whittingdale has been replaced by the more BBC-friendly Julie Kirkbride (an ex-BBC journalist) and Michael Howard has replaced Iain Duncan Smith. The new Tory leader has decided there are more votes in being a defender of the BBC, given public outrage at Downing Street’s perceived attempts to undermine its independence during and since the Andrew Gilligan saga.

The Government immediately dismissed the report’s proposals, and the chances of a Tory government in the run-up to BBC charter renewal in 2006 are pretty slim anyway. Looks like the Elstein report will gather dust until charter renewal comes round again, when almost every home will have hundreds of digital channels to choose from, broadband will be ubiquitous and the licence fee will be harder to defend.

• Hard to imagine anybody less of a media luvvie than Sir Peter Burt, ITV’s new chairman. Our paths crossed when he was chief executive of the Bank of Scotland. He is taciturn, undemonstrative, sharp as a button and very focused on improving efficiency and cutting costs - just the sort of chairman to instil discipline among big-spending media executives and keep the City happy.

Whether he’s the man to keep ITV out of the clutches of an American media giant is another matter. At the Bank of Scotland he mounted several mergers but was jilted at the last moment. In the end he was forced into a merger with the Halifax Building Society in which his bank was effectively taken over. ITV executives will hope he has learned from that bruising experience should Viacom, Disney or TimeWarner come knocking.

• The word from the City is that it is looking incredibly unlikely that Stephen Glover will succeed in raising the £15 million in initial capital he needs to fulfil his dream of launching a British Le Monde. There have been several expressions of interest, conditional on others stumping up some cash and so far no-one has written a cheque. Sad news for quality journalism and for readers who agree with Glover that the existing broadsheets have dumbed down too much. Good news for anyone not prepared to lose their shirts.

• Last week’s piece on the Guardian’s sales slump clearly found its mark: its media diary on Monday was largely given over to abuse of yours truly, complete with its hallmark mix of mean-spirited inaccuracy and invention. I loved it, especially since I understand the assault was masterminded by no less than Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. With sales down more than 10 per cent year-on-year - last week sales fell another 5,000 to 363,000, the lowest in recent memory and 46,000 down in the year - it’s not as if his attention is required elsewhere.