Category: Media Bans

On the 19th October 2021, Nina Cross reported in The Indicter

This is the second of now three articles looking at the different ways the BBC manipulates our perception of Julian Assange.  Part 1 looks at how the BBC helped the government to present Assange as a serious criminal after he was arrested in 2019.  Part 2 focuses on the ways the BBC has helped to grow a culture of impunity towards him, impunity which has taken hold inside British public institutions and courts, and which could result in his death if it is not stopped.

The upcoming US appeal against January’s court ruling that Assange would not be extradited has in essence nothing to do with extradition, but will focus on his character and psychology.  It is designed to discredit his name further, diminish his suffering and downplay the risks he faces in the US. We can see how the BBC has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for this.

A picture of prejudice and propaganda

We can see the corporate media smear campaign of Assange has not bypassed judges.  We know that Judge Snow, convicting Assange for bail violation, accused him of being a narcissist who could not get beyond his own self-interest after Assange simply said “I plead not guilty”.  We know Judge Taylor claimed Assange had been charged with rape and had to be corrected.  Sentencing him to 50 weeks in prison for bail skipping she dismissed his fears of persecution, ignored the appearance of the US indictment and claimed he had fled to the embassy to “evade justice”. This was illogical given the first US indictment against him was unsealed the day of his arrest, the official reasonsEcuador gave for granting asylum and the pile of threats against Assange’s life by US officials.  Judge Taylor repeated the same narrative of “evading justice” that the BBC and other corporate media had pushed for the years between Assange’s arrival at the embassy and the date of her sentencing.

The recent revelation of the CIA plot to kidnap and assassinate Assange in 2017, ignored by the BBC unless you live in Somalia, is vindication of Assange’s fears and shows Judge Taylor’s sentencing statement for what it was: politically motivated propaganda.  Judge Baraitser in turn was observed ruling significantly in favour of the requests made by the US prosecution,  arbitrarily barring trial monitors and opining that possible CIA plots to assassinate Assange back in 2010 were not unreasonable.

Even if we excluded the reality of allegiances and political influences, the fact judges have likely followed BBC and other corporate media news for the last decade means they have very likely acquired a negative and distorted view of Assange and historical facts around him.  The following are some of the ways the BBC has smeared Assange.

Discrediting Assange as a journalist

The BBC always describes Assange as the ‘founder of Wikileaks’ but for Jamal Khashoggi, Roman Protasevich, Anna Politkovskaya, and countless others, whose work does not threaten US military impunity but is considered ideologically acceptable, they qualify as journalist, activist journalist, dissident journalist, campaigning human rights journalist.  

But the journalist who exposes US war crimes is an “attention seeker“,  “definitely a bad house guest – that much we’re sure of,” an empty man, mischief-maker, wanting attention, a played Putin stooge, trouble-maker,  an activist hacker,  a narcissist – according to a “widely held opinion”, Russia’s useful idiot, unhygienic, uncaring towards his cat, noisy, rude and anti-social, a cyberterrorist with disgusting habits, someone who avoided extradition to Sweden to avoid being interviewed about sexual allegations: a fugitive,   a smirk-faced irresponsible hack who ha ha will be murdered by the CIA,  

But these form just a segment of output on Assange.  The BBC has greatly invested in his character assassination, which takes various forms, including news articles, videos and podcasts. Repetition is important if you want to programme your audience to dislike someone or worse see them as a danger, a public enemy.   And while we are busy being programmed that Assange is the enemy, we slip into a comatose state and forget who should be in the dock.  The BBC wants us to think the crimes against humanity, the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, the dissolution of entire countries, programmes of rendition and torture and state-sponsored military war crimes all pale into insignificance when compared to evil Assange.  The smearing of his character, designed to inspire disgust, has likely influenced judges just as much as it has other BBC licence payers.

Parallel to the nurturing of disgust towards Assange by the BBC, there is a growing disdain towards journalists not receiving corporate salaries.  The precedent-setting case of Craig Murray, sentenced by a High Court, shows that a tiered justice system is in the making in Britain, that journalists not in the corporate club do not have the same protections. The BBC’s long term toxic Assange-bashing output, reinforced by other corporate media, put together with a culture of disdain for ‘not proper journalists’ means that while he remains subjected to the will and whim of the British courts Assange’s life is in danger.

Airbrushing and hiding abuses of process 

The abuses of process and ill treatment inflicted upon Assange have been well-documented by the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer,  the United Nations, political leaders, lawyers, human rights advocates, doctors and NGOs.  Instead of practising journalism and exposing these abuses, the BBC has hidden the corruption of public institutions.

The BBC will tell you that the two initial investigations concerning Assange in Sweden were dropped by the public prosecutor but picked up later by another, Marianne Ny.  It won’t tell you that police changed witness testimony to give the appearance a possible rape had been committed.  It won’t tell you that the women involved went to the police station only to inquire if they could compel Assange to take an STD test.

The BBC will tell you that the Swedish prosecutors issued a red alert but won’t tell you this was issued along with a European arrest warrant after the prosecutor gave Assange permission to leave Sweden.  It will not tell you that Former Stockholm chief district prosecutor, Sven-Erik Alhem, described Ny’s steps to extradite Assange as:

“… unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate.” providing a statement on the abuses of process she had engaged in.

The BBC will tell you the Supreme Court ordered Assange to be extradited in 2012 but it will not tell you that the law was changed in 2014 so that extradition requests could not be issued in the same way Assange’s had been by Marianne Ny.

The BBC will tell you that Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning regarding sexual allegations, implying reluctance to cooperate with the Swedish authorities.  It won’t tell you Assange made repeated attempts to meet with the prosecutors but they stone-walled him.  Connecting political asylum to sexual violence does not make legal or common sense, except to Judge Taylor. What civilised countries give political asylum to suspects of sexual violence?  

The BBC sometimes tells you Assange sought asylum to avoid onward extradition from Sweden to the US, but this is not enough to counter its prolific fugitive rhetoric.  It will not tell you of the evidence indicating Sweden would extradite him to the US.

It will tell you that one of the two cases of allegations against Assange was dropped as the statute of limitations for the offence had expired while he was in the embassy.  It will not tell you that Marianne Ny had only to walk into the embassy or switch on the video link but refused, caving into the pressure from the CPS because Assange was “not just another extradition case.”

This BBC article published in 2012 – after Assange had sought refuge in the embassy – tells us the Swedish authorities accused Ecuador of halting the Swedish judicial process:

“The accusations… are serious, and it is unacceptable that Ecuador would want to halt the Swedish judicial process and European judicial co-operation,” said Anders Joerle, spokesman for the Swedish foreign ministry”.

but then the article tells us:

“A subsequent offer by Ecuador to allow Swedish investigators to interview Mr Assange inside the embassy was rejected.” 

What it does not tell you is that hanging an arrest warrant over someone and refusing to interview them is not normal practice.  This contradiction shows the suspect motives by the Swedish authorities; the intention was extradition not investigation. 

Assange himself told the BBC:

“The Swedish government refuses to behave in a way that is at all normal, rational or reasonable and that is why I have been granted political asylum”.

But instead of exposing the inconsistencies, contradictions and abnormal behaviours, the BBC has buried them as seen here: hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.

The Swedish authorities continued this abuse and in 2015 it was a factor in the decision of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) that Assange was arbitrarily detained.

The BBC will tell you Assange cost the British taxpayer many millions through surveillance by not leaving the Ecuadorian embassy but it will not tell you this was a misuse of public funds and of the police service. Hundreds of uniformed men and women stood bored outside the embassy in essence on ceremony, saluting the Whitehouse, while Theresa May slashed the policing budget during a period of soaring knife crime in London.

The BBC will tell you Assange is in Belmarsh prison but it won’t tell you that he was held in indefinite solitary confinement, contrary to the government’s agreement to comply with the UN convention against torture.

The impunity to persecute Assange has been enabled by the BBC through omission and silence. Instead of practising journalism it has turned a blind eye to abuses of the British authorities and those of its allies.    The BBC’s behaviour is contrary: anti-journalism, anti-truth.

Disinformation to defamation

Imagine being a judge and listening to BBC News the day Assange was arrested in April 2019. In this video chief BBC diplomatic reporter, James Landale:

• not only confuses the 2010 extradition request from Sweden with an extradition request not yet made by the USA, but his odd comment about “information and what we now call Wikileaks” appears to be a desperate attempt to avoid saying “US war crimes”
• claims “rape charges had lapsed but could be restarted if the Swedish authorities wished to do that.” Landale was most likely here referring to the statute of limitations for allegations as charges were never brought against Assange.

The Eton-educated Landale swings between allegations and charges, typical of corporate media’s disregard for factual accuracy.  Perhaps Etonian confidence is enough to persuade most judges he knew what he was talking about.  Landale plugged the government narrative, and whitewashed the Ecuadorian government’s abuses of process, claiming it “formally” withdrew asylum when in practice Assange was stripped of asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship without any due process. It was a catalogue of disinformation. During the video words appearing on the screen included “discourteous aggressive behaviour”.

A demonstration of how to cover abuses of process

In this 2019 BBC article we are told the Swedish prosecutors closed the case because:

“..at the time they felt they were unable to take the case forward while Assange was inside the Ecuadorean embassy.” 

This is how the BBC hides abuses of process. Procedures do not depend on the feelings of prosecutors; they are carried out according to laws and norms. Stone-walling your own investigation is an abuse and was a factor in the UNWGAD decision of arbitrary detention.

This BBC article in March 2015 quotes Ny on her U-turn decision to finally interview Assange to avoid completely sabotaging her own investigation. She shows no sense of urgency or responsibility towards the case she was supposedly investigating:

‘My view has always been that to perform an interview with him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London would lower the quality of the interview,’”  

Yet when the BBC reported that Swedish prosecutors finally dropped the supposed investigation in 2019 because: 

“…the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.” 

we have to question, because neither the BBC nor the courts have, is it normal for Swedish prosecutors to arrest someone, refuse to interview them for years then complain about having poor evidence? But we are in the fictitious world of the BBC where the fancy of prosecutors takes priority over law, which is presumably the same world inhabited by Judge Taylor.

Its behaviour shows that the BBC does not serve the interests of the public but of the Foreign Office, the British elite and its allies in the US security state, the true beneficiaries of the culture of impunity cultivated towards Assange.   Critical facts are buried or manipulated by the BBC, and arbitrarily ignored by the British courts, so we have a non-sensical distorted version of reality where the rulings of the courts reflect what is peddled in BBC output: disinformation, the abnormal presented as normal and gross contempt towards Assange. 

Logically judges and other professionals watch and read beyond BBC News, although likely digest other corporate media propaganda about Assange from outlets such as the Guardian.  And as recognised, many things influence judges.  However, the courtroom prejudice Assange has faced cannot be ignored, and a trial by media has run parallel to legal proceedings for years.

Neither can the power of the BBC be ignored, as David Clementi, former head claimed:

“No other national asset has the potential to serve Britain so powerfully”

In Assange’s case it has served the interests of the British state apparatus, enabling a culture of impunity by spoon feeding its audience government narratives, manipulating perception, and promoting ridicule and disdain.   The persecution of Assange that increasingly looks like a slow assassination by the UK and US authorities could not be so conceivable without a servile media.  The BBC stepped up.  It is time the trial by media ended.

Read original article in The Indicter

On the 28th September 2021, Nina Cross reported in The Indicter

This is the first of two articles analysing the role of the BBC in the state-sponsored persecution of Julian Assange.  It analyses how the British government used the BBC to present Assange as a criminal following his arrest on 11th April 2019.  It then examines how the BBC helped to control the narratives around the stripping of Assange’s asylum, a violation of international law.

Some BBC background – how Britain’s most powerful ‘national asset’ helps keep the British people in check while serving imperialism

To understand the position the BBC has taken towards Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, award-winning journalist, publisher, fiancé, father, son, brother, human being, it is useful to know some basic BBC facts.

The heads of the BBC are cherry-picked by the government.  They often have long and close links to the Prime Minister, such as Chris Patten who was a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet in 1989 and David Clementi, former deputy head of the Bank of England, advisor to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.  The current head is Richard Sharp, former advisor to Boris Johnson when Johnson was Mayor of London. Sharp was also the manager of the billionaire Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak when Sunak worked at Goldman Sachs bank. A political ally of the government, Sharp has donated £400,000 to the Tory party. He is so rich he can afford to work for the BBC for free.

It remains a criminal offence in Britain to have a TV and not pay for a TV licence, which provides the main source of income for the BBC.  People have served time, and still can, for not paying the licence fee.

In 2020 the licence fee income amounted to £3,750,000,000, more than the UK spent on its prisons in 2019.  Its commercial activities generate more income. The BBC’s funding position, described by the regulator OFCOM as privileged,  provides senior journalists, news anchors and news presenters with lucrative salaries.

The Foreign Secretary controls the objectives, priorities, targets and languages in which the World Service is delivered.

The BBC World Service is not regulated, it is exempt from official scrutiny despite the BBC having a far greater international audience than domestic. The BBC’s global news could possibly reach a weekly target of 500 million by 2022.

The World Service is funded by licence fees and by the government.  In 2015 it was allocated £289 million from the National Security and Defence budget under the then PM David Cameron, to be spread over five years.  This may very possibly be continued. 

Last year the previous head of the BBC, David Clementi, commented:

“No other national asset has the potential to serve Britain so powerfully – uniting us as one nation at home, and representing global Britain abroad… The BBC is a great national asset; a diminished BBC is a weakened United Kingdom.” 

In short, the BBC helps the British elite to control the narrative at home and abroad.  With the BBC on board, conjointly with other corporate media servile to the powerful, tyranny can be exported to countries targeted by the Foreign Office in the form of military, economic or proxy wars, façade managed as ‘humanitarian’ or wars against terror.  Julian Assange has helped us to understand this tyranny. 

How the British government used the BBC to manage Assange’s arrest

Within an hour and a half of Assange’s arrest on 11^th April 2019, the BBC broadcasted a statement by Jeremy Hunt, the then Foreign Secretary.  The BBC refused to answer any FOI questions about this interview, and so far the Foreign Office has denied any correspondence exists around it (a review is supposedly in progress).  It was likely filmed in a room in the Foreign Office, indicated by this image of former junior Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan, apparently taken in the same place.  This suggests that Hunt invited the BBC to the Foreign Office explicitly to manage the narrative around the Ecuadorian government stripping Assange of his asylum.

Hunt made no reference to any crime, charge or conviction; by implication he painted Assange as a dishonest, despicable and cowardly character “Assange is no hero” “…has been hiding from the truth for years” “…has held the Ecuadorian embassy hostage…”

At the time the statement was broadcasted all Assange was known to be wanted for was a 7-year old breach of police bail which was not attached to any charge, but which had resulted from him seeking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy.  In essence, Hunt used Britain’s most powerful ‘national asset’ to create a sense of grievous criminal behaviour over a minor violation of law,.  This made no legal or logical sense

Jeremy Hunt had not been known to use Britain’s most powerful ‘national asset’ to make similar speeches about the thousands of people who have skipped bail over the years in Britain, or about known serious offenders but on 11^thApril 2019 he decided to single out Julian Assange for such treatment.

Hunt’s treatment of Assange can be compared to the case taken to the ECHR against Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Khodorkovsky when Putin was the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.  Khodorkovsky claimed Putin violated his right to the presumption of innocence by making certain comments, including “a thief should be in jail” prior to Khodorkovsky’s second trial for financial crimes.  However, the ECHR ruled that Putin did not violate the presumption of innocence as:

• his comments were spontaneous, unrehearsed
• they were made during a presser covering many topics – not coordinated around Khodorkovsky
• Putin clarified the comments related to Khodorkovsky’s first conviction

We now compare the same criteria to Hunt’s comments about Assange and we see the opposite applies:

• they implied criminal behaviour without reference to any charge or conviction
• they formed a statement, pre-written and likely rehearsed
• the filming of his statement was likely engineered by Hunt using Britain’s most powerful ‘national asset’, for the purpose of encouraging the public to see Assange in a particular way
• no other media outlet was invited by Hunt to pose questions or challenge Hunt’s narrative
• as the only journalist in a position to ask questions or challenge Hunt, the BBC journalist did not go there, instead his question invited Hunt to pick up a different point

In Khodorkovsky’s case the ECHR explained both defamation and violation of the right to the presumption of innocence:

The Court reiterates that Article 6 § 2 will be violated if a statement of a public official concerning a person charged with a criminal offence reflects an opinion that he is guilty before he has been proved so according to law. It suffices, even in the absence of any formal finding, that there is some reasoning to suggest that the official regards the accused as guilty.

The Court has previously held that Article 6 § 2, in its relevant aspect, is aimed at preventing the undermining of a fair criminal trial by prejudicial statements made in close connection with those proceedings. Where no such proceedings are, or have been in existence, statements attributing criminal or other reprehensible conduct are relevant rather to considerations of protection against defamation and raising potential issues under Article 8

Other ministers, including the then PM Theresa May, the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid and the then junior Foreign Minister Alan Duncan, all piled in with statements that Assange was “rightly facing justice”.  Yet all they could muster between them was a minor police bail skipping offence, showing a wildly disproportionate use of their high-ranking public offices, two of them using the ready-to-serve-empire BBC, available on tap.  In Hunt’s case he used both the BBC and Twitter.  Of all the statements on Assange’s arrest it was Theresa May’s that referenced the charge of bail skipping. Following this she claimed “…this goes to show that in the UK, no one is above the law”, another phrase employed throughout the day by this group of ministers.

This reference to UK law was by design: Assange had been in the Ecuadorian embassy legitimately under international laws of asylum.   In 2015 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNGWAD) stated the UK “refused to honour its obligations to respect Mr. Assange’s asylum under either the 1951 Refugee Convention, or customary international law” and that  Assange was being held in arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian embassy.  So, on the day of his arrest, Britain’s top ministers engaged in a campaign of buzz words to bury any noise that could be made about the UNGWAD statement and cover the crimes of the Ecuadorian government in removing Assange’s asylum.  

All this before Assange had even entered court over the bail charge.  Assange had no hope of the presumption of innocence.  Their behaviour was an example of public mobbing’ , a term used by the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, to describe how public institutions and officials have attacked Assange.

And it was not just the general public who made up the BBC audience: many judges would have listened to the BBC and other corporate news reporting ministers’ statements that day.

A few days later Assange received the harshest sentence possible in Britain for this minor offence: 12 months in prison.   He was sent to Britain’s most secure prison, where he remains almost two and a half years later as a favour to the US government.

How the BBC helped the governments of Ecuador and the US to manage Assange’s arrest

By the day of Assange’s arrest, the same day the US requested his extradition from Britain, the BBC had published multiple articles on Assange’s fears about this happening.  Examples are here, here, here here and here. Yet a few days after Assange’s arrest, reporter Jon Sopel, on a £245,000 BBC salary, sat with the President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, and ignored almost a decade of BBC articles on the subject.  Instead, Sopel fed Moreno lines that allowed him to spread whatever defaming and damning narratives he wanted:

Sopel:

• How did he treat staff? 
• I heard reports that he was spying on your staff, what does that mean?
• His claim is that he is a champion of open government, of freedom of information, that he is a journalist and deserved asylum
• Do you believe he is an agent for Russia?
• So he was on the Russian side?
• Were you under pressure by the British and from the Americans to revoke his asylum?
• Are you relieved that he is gone?

Moreno’s answers painted a filthy faeces-smearing , physically violent, unhinged cyber-terrorist spy working for Russia.  All of Moreno’s narratives have been debunked.  This ‘piece’ by the BBC is titled ““Assange smeared faeces in the Ecuador embassy” says president’”

Such narratives served to dehumanise Assange and to contain his support.  Not only did it shield the US from public scrutiny, but it also enabled Moreno to promote unhinged claims by leading US politicians including Jo Biden (“Assange is a hi-tech terrorist”) and Mike Pompeo when head of the CIA  (“Wikileaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service”). It is now known that using the narratives of ‘hostile’ and ‘terrorist’ individuals inside the Trump government including Pompeo considered assassinating Assange.

Sopel reported back home on his ‘interview’, repeating the stories peddled by Moreno. He delivered the defaming and debunked stories to BBC World News which even then had a weekly audience of hundreds of millions. 

We see that the BBC is the propaganda tool of choice for the British government to assault Assange.  It is on tap to the government, it can stream their false statements, it can send a team up at the snap of a Foreign Office finger, it can be relied upon to not ask intelligent questions or challenge narratives, it can feed useful lines, it can promote defaming narratives on its huge BBC World News platform, there are no stories it will not peddle: faeces, cat abuse.  All of these have been used on Assange. 

Part 2 of the role of the BBC in the persecution of Julian Assange will look at:

BBC disinformation, its sustained campaign to ignore historical facts, its sustained campaign to delegitimise Assange as a journalist, character assassination, repetition and promoting of US narratives.

The appeal hearing at the High Court which will decide Julian Assange’s fate has been set for Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th October.   On Saturday 23rd October, there will be a demonstration in support of Julian Assange assembling at the BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place at 1 pm for a march to the High Court.

Read original article in The Indicter

Also covering media bans and biased reporting of the Assange Saga by Mainstream Media Britain’s Guardian publishes 78 articles on Nalvany to 16 on Assange