The very odd case of Julian Assange

I am guessing that most readers of this blog tend towards a sympathy, perhaps a very strong attachment, towards freedom of expression and of the journalistic professions.  But what do we say about Assange?  Perpetrator of a fairly extreme case of leaks of an embarrassing nature (to put it mildly); and as a former soldier I'm sensitive to security issues.  But his subsequent hounding, and treatment in general, has been extraordinary: beyond all reason.  (For Hillary Clinton to ask if he couldn't be bumped off is pretty extreme, even given what an unpleasant person she evidently is.)  Likewise, his personal commitment to principles is pretty remarkable - he'd have made good martyr material in former ages.

All that said:  by Heaven, he's patently a really annoying person - just in terms of personality, I mean.  One can't help but think he has pissed off almost everyone he's ever met.  Obviously, people with a deeply stubborn streak - eigensinnig, to use the excellent German word - are often like that: and maybe we depend upon them for the expression of the unsayable, when anyone less stubborn (brave?) would have been shaken out of their position a lot sooner than he.

But really, ultimately: do they do their causes any good?  Solzhenitsyn has always seemed to me to be in that category.  Thanks to the interweb and the prevalence of webcasts etc, we can form these views much more readily now, where previously (as with my view on Mr S) we'd have been guessing.  To take a rather more mundane example, Kathleen Stock is a person I greatly admire - at the intellectual level: but watch her in a discussion on the www.  Frankly, I'll stick with her writings, thanks, and never wish to meet her.    

This line of thought is squarely ad hominem, by very definition.  But I do believe it's a strong factor in these cases.  Rightly or wrongly.

ND

Deeply Misleading Impressions, aka Total Bollocks

Remember how Miliband used to conjure up helpful members of the public in his speeches?

"I met a man in my constituency the other day", he would say, "in MacDonalds, you know, and he said to me 'Ed, obviously you're the best leader the Labour Party has ever had, and a really clever bloke - but somehow people get the wrong end of the stick when you're trying to you get your message across and so it makes you look as though you're useless, even though we all know your policies are really brilliant, particularly that energy price freeze'."

That sort of thing.  Really, really credible.

Well.  At the weekend in our BTL discussion on freedom of the press, the name of IMPRESS came up in a comment from our good friend Radders.  As it happens I'd just been reading a particularly self-serving piece about IMPRESS by one Jonathan Heawood, its chief exec.  Here's an extract**. 

It's a pity that the only thing some people know about Impress is that we are linked to Max Mosley.  I got talking recently to someone who asked me what I did for a living.  "Press regulation," I said.  "Oh yes?" he said, brightly.  "There are two regulators these days, aren't there?  Which one are you with — the one that's run by the motor-racing chap?"  "You mean Max Mosley?" "That's the fellow. " "Well, yes, I'm with Impress. And yes, it's supported by a charity that's funded by Max Mosley's family trust, but actually I run it."  "Oh. Not Mosley?"  "No. He doesn't have anything to do with it."  He was surprised. Not particularly bothered (he had nothing against Mosley; in fact, he admired him for the stand he had taken against newspaper intrusion), but surprised.  He was familiar enough with the issue to know that there were two press regulators in the UK, but innocent enough to believe that one of those regulators was run by Mosley.  He is not alone.  Most news about Impress is published by newspapers whose owners have a vested interest in our failure.  As a result, we move through a fog of misinformation.

Don't you just love "in fact, he admired him"?  What a nice touch.

I think I can safely say, I don't believe a word of that.  Just my opinion, mind.  And I've probably been befuddled by all that, errr, fog.

ND
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** British Journalism Review, June 2018 

Will the 'Free Press' Be There When We Need It? - Weekend Essay

A few years ago it was possible to be pretty depressed about the state of investigative journalism in the UK.  At one end of the spectrum there was, for example, the mighty FT which fell significantly short of what ought be one of its raisons d’être – to break stories about financial wrongdoing.  It scarcely even pretended otherwise.  When the Enron meltdown occurred - the biggest financial collapse that had ever happened until then, in a company much lauded for innovation and achievement - it completely blind-sighted the FT (amongst others) which then spent weeks mournfully breast-beating over its manifest failure even to recognise, still less to report what was going on.  Just once in a while the Economist might essay something mildly controversial.   

It was easy to guess that an overly nervous attitude towards the reaction of big advertisers lay at the root of much of this indolence and cowardice – and not much about the easily-observed conduct of (e.g.) the Telegraph or the Murdoch media suggested otherwise.   Another cause was manifestly the deep cuts being made to the numbers of fulltime journalists employed by ‘Fleet Street’ – and to their expense accounts.

[So pathetic has been financial reporting that when this modest blog started to gain traction, the good Guido asked if we would become the financial arm of Order-Order, to do for the City of London what he does for City of Westminster.  We felt he’d missed a rather important point about companies’ willingness to litigate …]

At the other end of the spectrum was the decline in once-proud regional newspapers.  Time was when the Yorkshire Post had a dedicated Westminster team; a conceit, perhaps, but dozens of big-city papers would reckon to be able to mount proper investigations on issues of local concern.  Over the years, however, the local press become commoditized.  Owned for the most part by a small number of chains, they became depressingly formulaic productions under a cost-cutting imperative.  To fill out the gaps between advertisements, these rags would typically carry a dozen stories under a single “reporter’s” by-line every issue, this hard-pressed hack mostly re-hashing spoon-fed press releases: they no time to get out onto the streets and find out for themselves.  And avoiding the controversial had the added benefit of minimsing the risks of legal costs and upsetting advertisers.  The ease, and increasingly the ultra-low cost, of running photos in newspapers completed the descent into vacuity.  Breaking a story?  Only if it involved a photogenic kitten - with all material supplied gratis via email by someone with a digital camera.

To cap it all, we had the menacing pincer movement of, on the one hand Leveson, seemingly bent on grinding the press into craven submission; and on the other, social meejah that were (a) breaking stories, true and fake, with minimal cost or regard for the consequences; and (b) eating the MSM’s advertising revenue for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  How would any mainstream outlet find the balls to take on controversial material?  We seemed to be left with Michael Crick, Guido and a handful of others hacking away at the relatively easy targets: individual slimeball politicians who are poorly placed to retaliate.  Little wonder that purposefully generated fake news overwhelms truth in so many quarters.  And with so many universities reduced to gibbering jelly by the contagion of “identity politics” and its flagrant disavowal of reason and objectivity, well might Pilate’s challenge ring out again:  where is truth?  

 But lo! - out of this depressing state of affairs has come something of a turnaround.  At the national and international level, triggered by the really big wikileaks-type of mega-revelations, a newly rediscovered taste for seriously disruptive journalism has been given a significant boost.  By way of a symptom of this:  for some years Private Eye had allowed the 'Paul Foot' awards (for investigative journalism) to lapse.  But they were revived in 2017; and this year saw a shortlist of finalists that was pretty impressive.

Equally heartening, there is a new phenomenon arising out of – yes – regional journalism.  The newspaper chains that dominate ownership of local papers, notwithstanding their unimaginative, ad-laden hard-copy and websites, have started to support pooled teams of reporters from across their multiple titles – and given them mandates and resources to go after stories that actually require diligent research and a bit of patience.  And at all levels, it seems, when the proprietor permits, the hack still hankers after breaking the big scandal.

All this leaves me slightly more optimistic about the health of investigative journalism right now, which seems to be appropriately rude – even if operating as a small fleet of vulnerable vessels in an ocean of craven dross.

And with the newly serious prospect of a Corbyn/McDonnell government in the air, it’s timely.  If this ghastly contingency ever takes place, I think we may confidently predict an all-out attack on freedom of the press as a flanking maneouvre to protect their malign endeavors.  We know that the already-powerful EC dreams of making disrespect of the federast project an offence - and the euro-wallahs are at least somewhat restrained by due process.

I tremble for free speech at the hands of a C/M regime coming to power in anarchic conditions.  We shall need journalists with a determined bias for the truth, working for organisations with serious institutional balls.  We shall need them like never before.  Will they be there?  The question stands. 

ND

Press Freedoms On The Line

The writings of Roy Greenslade are frequently suspect, but on this occasion I think he deserves a hearing.

It's about what he reckons is a backdoor way of getting the shocking 'section 40' into law.  Section 40, if triggered, means that a publisher that has not signed up with the 'official UK press regulator' and gets sued for libel, must pay the legal costs of both sides, even if they win.  At the moment S40 is in abeyance.  This sword of damocles should be consigned to the furnace, not left lying around for malicious implementation.

What's wrong with forcing publishers to sign up?  Earlier this week it was IMPRESS, Max Mosley's vehicle for revenge on the press, that was annointed 'official UK press regulator'.  (The fact that JK Rowling and Rowntree are also involved does not make me feel any the more comfortable.)

And we consider ourselves a free nation?  You couldn't, as they say, make it up.  Heaven help us.

ND 

Press Freedom is a boring subject

Here we are today, with the Government in a nice fix of its own making over Press Freedom. The Left, in the form of Labour and 'Hacked-Off', together with the Guardian spinning some crucial lies at the right time, have managed to get a majority in Parliament on their to to regulate the press by statute. So ending 300 years of Press Freedom. What do 'the people' think - er, nothing, this is nto really one for the man on the Clapham Omnibus is it. Indeed, after the scandal of phone hacking most people probably think the Press needs its wings clipping. I could not agree more, but with a whole host of journalists awaiting trial we are already at the point where future journo's will think twice before doing anything to get a story?

But the whole press issue is boring, of more interest is the direction of travel. How long will the writers of this blog continue to be able to publish without being registered or be able to publish with anonymity? We have been writing for 7 years now, but I doubt that will last another 7 years without state intrusion. Across the world there are great attacks on press freedom, often in a mis-applied response to the rise of twitter and facebook as forums for information sharing.

However, newspapers who are shock story driven, are overly keen to promote themselves as this thin end of the wedge, when the collective behavoiur of the editors has been abhorrent for years. Just look at the Gaurdian's relativistic morals publishing of Edward Snowden's revelations or the Mail happily laying into the dead if it helps make their point.

How can we stop the politicians form hiding there affairs and expenses (which explains the keeness of the dishonourbale members to vote for regulation on all sides of the house) but also tame the wilder elements on the press who are happy to ruin peoples' lives for the sake of a few extra copies? As often, the simple way is actually to carry on as is. The Written press is dying out anyway with newspaper sales and revenues collapsing. it's current desperation is bourne out of its failing business model. Let's instead allow it to blow itself out, but not let the politicians ape France and be able hide their indiscretions and wrong-doings.