Events of the past few days suggest British journalism \u2013 the so-called Fourth Estate \u2013 is not what it purports to be: a watchdog monitoring the centers of state power. It is quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
The pretensions of the establishment media took a severe battering this month as the defamation trial of Guardian<\/em> columnist Carole Cadwalladr reached its conclusion and the hacked emails of Paul Mason, a long-time stalwart of the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian<\/em>, were published online.<\/p>\n Both of these celebrated journalists have found themselves outed as recruits \u2013 in their differing ways \u2013 to a covert information war being waged by Western intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n Had they been honest about it, that collusion might not matter so much. After all, few journalists are as neutral or as dispassionate as the profession likes to pretend. But along with many of their colleagues, Cadwalladr and Mason have broken what should be a core principle of journalism: transparency.<\/p>\n The role of serious journalists is to bring matters of import into the public space for debate and scrutiny. Journalists thinking critically aspire to hold those who wield power \u2013 primarily state agencies \u2013 to account on the principle that, without scrutiny, power quickly corrupts.<\/p>\n The purpose of real journalism \u2013 as opposed to the gossip, entertainment and national-security stenography that usually passes for journalism \u2013 is to hit up, not down.<\/p>\n And yet, both of these journalists, we now know, were actively colluding, or seeking to collude, with state actors who prefer to operate in the shadows, out of sight. Both journalists were coopted to advance the aims of the intelligence services.<\/p>\n And worse, each of them either sought to become a conduit for, or actively assist in, covert smear campaigns run by Western intelligence services against other journalists.<\/p>\n What they were doing \u2013 along with so many other establishment journalists \u2013 is the very antithesis of journalism. They were helping to conceal the operation of power to make it harder to scrutinize. And not only that. In the process, they were trying to weaken already marginalized journalists fighting to hold state power to account.<\/p>\n Russian collusion?<\/strong><\/p>\n Cadwalladr\u2019s cooperation with the intelligence services has been highlighted only because of a court case. She was sued for defamation by Arron Banks, a businessman and major donor to the successful Brexit campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.<\/p>\n In a kind of transatlantic extension of the Russiagate hysteria in the United States following Donald Trump\u2019s election as president in 2016, Cadwalladr accused Banks of lying about his ties to the Russian state. According to the court, she also suggested he broke election funding laws by receiving Russian money in the run-up to the Brexit vote, also in 2016.<\/p>\n That year serves as a kind of ground zero for liberals fearful about the future of \u201cWestern democracy\u201d \u2013 supposedly under threat from modern \u201cbarbarians at the gate,\u201d such as Russia and China \u2013 and about the ability of Western states to defend their primacy through neo-colonial wars of aggression around the globe.<\/p>\n The implication is Russia masterminded a double subversion in 2016: on one side of the Atlantic, Trump was elected US president; and, on the other, Britons were gulled into shooting themselves in the foot \u2013 and undermining Europe \u2013 by voting to leave the EU.<\/p>\n Faced with the court case, Cadwalladr could not support her allegations against Banks as true. Nonetheless, the judge ruled<\/a> against Banks\u2019 libel action, on the basis that the claims had not sufficiently harmed his reputation.<\/p>\n The judge also decided<\/a>, perversely in a British defamation action, that Cadwalladr had \u201creasonable grounds\u201d to publish claims that Banks received \u201csweetheart deals\u201d from Russia, even though \u201cshe had seen no evidence he had entered into any such deals.\u201d An investigation<\/a> by the National Crime Agency ultimately found no evidence either.<\/p>\n So given those circumstances, what was the basis for her accusations against Banks?<\/p>\n Cadwalladr\u2019s journalistic modus operandi,<\/em> in her long-running efforts to suggest widespread Russian meddling in British politics, is highlighted in her witness statement<\/a> to the court.<\/p>\n In it, she refers to another of her Russiagate-style stories: one from 2017 that tried to connect the Kremlin with Nigel Farage, a former pro-Brexit politician with the UKIP Party and close associate of Banks, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been a political prisoner in the UK for more than a decade.<\/p>\n At that time, Assange was confined to a single room in the Ecuadorian Embassy after its government offered him political asylum. He had sought sanctuary there, fearing he would be extradited to the US following publication by WikiLeaks of revelations that the US and UK had committed war crimes<\/a> in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n WikiLeaks had also deeply embarrassed the CIA by following up with the publication of leaked documents, known as Vault 7<\/a>, exposing the agency\u2019s own crimes.<\/p>\n Last week the UK\u2019s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, approved<\/a> the very extradition to the US that Assange feared and that drove him into the Ecuadorian embassy. Once in the US, he faces up to 175 years in complete isolation in a supermax jail.<\/p>\n Assassination plot<\/strong><\/p>\n We now know, courtesy of a Yahoo News investigation, that through 2017 the CIA hatched various schemes either to\u00a0assassinate<\/a> Assange or to kidnap him in one of its illegal \u201cextraordinary rendition\u201d operations, so he could be permanently locked up in the US, out of public view.<\/p>\n We can surmise that the CIA also believed it needed to prepare the ground for such a rogue operation by bringing the public on board. According to Yahoo\u2019s investigation, the CIA believed Assange\u2019s seizure might require a gun battle on the streets of London.<\/p>\n It was at this point, it seems, that Cadwalladr and the Guardian<\/em> were encouraged to add their own weight to the cause of further turning public opinion against Assange.<\/p>\n According to her witness statement, \u201ca confidential source in [the] US\u201d suggested \u2013 at the very time the CIA was mulling over these various plots \u2013 that she write about a supposed visit by Farage to Assange in the embassy. The story ran in the Guardian<\/em> under the headline \u201cWhen Nigel Farage met Julian Assange<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In the article, Cadwalladr offers a strong hint as to who had been treating her as a confidant: the one source mentioned<\/a> in the piece is \u201ca highly placed contact with links to US intelligence\u201d. In other words, the CIA almost certainly fed her the agency\u2019s angle on the story.<\/p>\n Carole Cadwalladr says in her witness statement that "a confidential source in US" gave her the idea for her highly-speculative Farage\/Assange story in 2017 about WikiLeaks' CIA leak. <\/p>\n The article's only official source was "a highly placed contact with links to US intelligence" pic.twitter.com\/FYg4wqj9OJ<\/a><\/p>\n — Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) June 13, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n