Sunday 23 January 2022

Fair Comment In The Public Interest

Carole Cadwalladr is practically being carried through the streets in triumph. This is despite, or because of, the legal discovery that she had obtained her story about Arron Banks, who may yet win his case, from "a contractor to the UK security services".

That could only have been either the Institute for Statecraft, which runs the Integrity Initiative in which Cadwalladr has been an enthusiastic participant as a spooks' sewer, or Christopher Steele, to which she has connections through his company, Orbis. By the way, Orbis also has ties to Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal.

What a thoroughly unedifying spectacle, to rank even with the award of the Pullitzer Prize to Cadwalladr for a story that the Information Commissioner found to be totally false. There was absolutely no link whatever between Cambridge Analytica and the Leave campaign.

Against Banks, Cadwalladr is not even running a defence of truth, but only a defence of fair comment in the public interest. If it is a real journalist that you want, then be outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand from nine o'clock tomorrow morning, to wait for the ruling at 10:45 as to whether or not Julian Assange would be permitted to appeal to the Supreme Court.

2 comments:

  1. A spooks' sewer, genius. Cadwalladr's readers cannot face the fact that the decades since Britain joined the EEC have been so bad for the areas that voted Leave, we took the opportunity to kick over the whole system. It's like their inability to understand why Trump won in America the same year.

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    1. Like the referendum, they are convinced that that election was rigged, even while screaming that the one in 2020 was not. Of course, none of those three was rigged.

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