Tesco accuses the Guardian of publishing deliberate lies

Date Posted: 31 July 2008

Tesco is spending its time in the courtroom this summer. The supermarket chain brought a libel case against the Guardian; claiming that the newspaper published unfounded allegations about Tesco’s taxpaying corporate behaviour.

The Guardian wrongly said that Tesco was avoiding up to £1bn in a corporation tax avoidance scheme. Tesco has refused to accept an apology from the Guardian for the article, and has accused the paper and its editor of telling deliberate lies.

Tesco must decide by September 15 whether to accept the Guardian's offer of an apology and suitable damages, or whether to go to court.

BrandIndex shows a 6% drop in ‘Buzz’ scores (the question wording for ‘Buzz’ is: have you heard of anything positive or negative for the brand?) for Tesco, falling from +4% to 0% within 2 weeks and dropped further to -6% by the end of June. The scores started to recover relatively quickly and they are show 5% at the end of July.

BrandIndex will be interested to see how the story develops for the supermarket giant.

Agi Zabo, BrandIndex Research Executive

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