The Fight For Press Freedom - Still A War Without End

Joan Smith (as of June 2014) is now heading the Hacked-Off Campaign 
[Independent journalist Joan Smith is to take over from Brian Cathcart as executive director of press reform pressure group Hacked Off. As new press regulator IPSO gears up for launch in September 2014, Hacked Off is arguing that the new body lacks independence from the press industry so will suffer the same failings as the PCC.Smith is a columnist for The Independent and was a victim of phone-hacking by the News of the World. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/journalist-and-hacking-victim-joan-smith-take-over-leadership-hacked ]


Joan Smith: pictured above giving evidence to Leveson

7 July 2013
The McCanns: Innocent until tried by the newspapers.
As British police swoop in six years on, Kate and Gerry McCann face weeks of press chatter
Joan Smith
I'm sure Kate and Gerry McCann, whom I've met on several occasions, are desperately hoping they will finally discover what happened to their daughter. No one who heard their testimony to the Leveson inquiry could doubt how much they've suffered because of the loss of their child
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-mccanns-innocent-until-tried-by-the-newspapers-8692535.html

Spiked-online.com
7 August 2014
THE FIGHT FOR PRESS FREEDOM - STILL A WAR WITHOUT END
Mick Hume - Editor-at-large
Now we know: anti-hacking hysteria was just a flag of convenience.
You might have thought this was one war that would be all over by this summer, never mind next Christmas. After all, the big phone-hacking trial, focused on events at the now-closed News of the World up to 2006, finished last month with the conviction of one former editor, Andy Coulson, and the acquittal of another, Rebekah Brooks. Wasn’t hacking what the whole row was supposed to be about?

Yet the free press wars are carrying on regardless. As the fog of war clears, it should be obvious by now that (as in all wars), things are not really as they may have first appeared. The phone-hacking scandal was, as spiked argued from the moment the first shots were fired, merely a pretext for pursuing the wider war aims of sanitising the UK press. Defending the high-profile victims of hacking became a flag of convenience beneath which a coalition of illiberal liberals advanced their campaign to purge the press of whatever does not suit the tastes of those for whom ‘popular’ is a dirty word.

The war on press freedom has not ended with the hacking trial, but simply moved to new fronts. In the forefront, of course, is the tabloid-bashing Hacked Off campaign fronted by actor Hugh Grant and former funnyman Steve Coogan. Hacked Off might look like a two-men-and-their-blog outfit, but it has far more clout than any other little fringe lobby group. It has exploited the weakness of the political and cultural elites’ attachment to freedom in order to shape the agenda on press regulation: instigating the Leveson Inquiry showtrial of the entire ‘culture, practices and ethics’ of the press; ghostwriting the report’s key proposals for state-backed regulation; stitching up the squalid deal for a regulator backed by Royal Charter in an infamous late-night meeting with the leaders of the political parties; and then issuing a public demand for the newspapers to bow the knee to the Royal Charter signed by ‘200 leading cultural figures’ from the liberal elite.

Backed by these big battalions, Hacked Off’s supporters are continuing their campaign to sabotage press freedom. What they are up to now was spelt out this week by Hacked Off’s new executive director, Joan Smith. The contempt for freedom which motivates it, meanwhile, was being revealed behind the scenes by Steve Coogan.

Joan Smith is a broadsheet writer who assured the Leveson Inquiry that respectable journalists such as her were ‘a different breed’ from mongrel tabloid hacks. As the head of Hacked Off, she is apparently delighted that the political parties have put in place the Royal Charter on press regulation (despite the fact that, at the time this compromise was first proposed, the Leveson lobby dismissed it as a sellout). However, Hacked Off is also furious that no national newspaper has yet agreed to sign up to the state-recognised regulator, with most of the big publishing groups preferring their own Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), due to take over from the Press Complaints Commission next month. Despite the Leveson lobby’s supposed support for ‘voluntary independent self-regulation’, the only two of those words it really values are ‘regulation’ and ‘independent’ (of the press, not the state).

So how do Hacked Off’s crusaders hope to bend the press to their will and finally make it bow before a state-backed regulator? Smith told the Press Gazette website this week that they intend to start by pressurising big advertisers to pull out of newspapers that have not signed up to the regulator recognised by Royal Charter. ‘It’s not about influencing editorial policy’, she insisted (no? What is it about then – getting the redtops to change the colour of their mastheads?), ‘but it is about asking advertisers whether advertising in newspapers that don’t actually sign up to a recognised regulator… sits with their Corporate Social Responsibility statements’. By calling on the higher power of CSR, the pro-regulation lobby seeks to disguise itself once more in the cloak of ‘ethics’. But as ever, this allegedly ethical smokescreen only masks the pursuit of a rather more base agenda. By deploying the dirty tactics of ‘ethical’ blackmail threats and ad blockades, their aim is effectively to starve the anti-charter sections of the press into submission.

If the newspapers still don’t sign up to the medieval-style Royal Charter, says Smith of Hacked Off, she would ‘expect that to trigger a failure report to the government’. And the Leveson lobby clearly sees next year’s General Election as a chance to put such a failure to rights. Smith says that Hacked Off will be lobbying hard at both the Tory and Labour conferences this autumn to get a manifesto commitment to even tougher state-backed press regulation (they won’t bother with the Lib Dems, as they are already apparently committed). It seems that they are pinning their hopes on a Labour government – or perhaps better yet for the prigs’ party, a Labour-Lib Dem collation – in 2015. The UK press regulation battleground, according to Joan Smith, ‘might be in a very different position’ after the General Election. The shadow of Leveson looms over British politics.

While Hacked Off’s executive director tries to sound high-minded, its celebrity voiceover artists tend to reveal the low motives and opinion of liberty behind the crusade. Thus Private Eye has reported the antics of Steve Coogan (and his political lobbyist, former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris) in pressurising publications to rewrite or even remove their reports of some embarrassing remarks about celebrity campaigners and Angelina Jolie in particular that he made in a GQ interview with Alastair Campbell. In a pathetic post-publication ‘clarification’, Campbell wrote that, even though the printed quotes from Coogan were ‘accurate in literal terms’, the interviewee had actually meant that he had more respect for celebrities who have the courage to challenge ‘press abuses and excesses’. In other words, as the Eye noted, he had ‘much more respect’ for, err, himself. Coogan and his acolytes seem perfectly willing to ‘abuse’ press freedom and demand censorship when it suits.

What makes this even more risible, of course, is that Coogan, who has denounced press freedom as ‘a lie’, has recently been trying to pose as a misunderstood free-speech man, signing up as a patron of the charity Index on Censorship. Last week he turned up at the launch of Hack Attack, a book by the Guardian’s award-winning phone-hacking correspondent Nick Davies (to which I shall give full and fair consideration in a forthcoming edition of the monthly spiked review of books). Asked by the London Evening Standard’s diarist if he hated all journalists, Coogan said of course not: ‘I just don’t want to be caricatured as being anti-freedom of speech.’ So who were the fearless soldiers of the free press he admired? There were, it seems, two – Davies, and John Pilger. These heroes, entirely coincidentally, were the only two journalists among the 200 cultural figures who signed Hacked Off’s statement of support for the Royal Charter. Like all of his ilk, Coogan supports free speech for people who use it to say what he agrees with.

Joan Smith concluded her Press Gazette interview by declaring that Hacked Off is not going away, despite the approaching closure of the hacking scandal that midwifed it into life. No, she said, ‘we’ll keep going until we see quite dramatic improvements in sections of the press’. By which they effectively mean: until the right of a free press to decide for itself what it offers its readers has been ‘improved’ out of existence. The newspapers’ own new regulator, IPSO, looks bad enough news for press freedom, having made far too many concessions to the Leveson lobby. Yet that victory is not enough for the regulators. We will have to be prepared to fight the free-press wars through next year’s General Election campaign, after which we could face the risk of Hugh Grant playing at being prime minister again in an even more dreadful sequel – ‘Leveson, Actually’.
Mick Hume is spiked’s editor-at-large. His book, There is No Such Thing as a Free Press… And We Need One More Than Ever, is published by Societas. (Order this book from Amazon (UK) (Visit his website: http://www.freethepress.co.uk/ )
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-fight-for-press-freedom-still-a-war-without-end/15569#.U-jbOpV0zmI

Thanks for posting that tasprin. A very worrying chunk of information for anyone who cares genuinely about the freedom of the press.

Neville Thurlbeck blog http://www.nevillethurlbeck.com/

Monday, 11 August 2014
Oxford Union Debate. The case against statutory regulation of the press.
by Neville Thurlbeck - Former News Editor & Chief Reporter at the NoTW

Apologies for the late posting of this but as I'm sure many of you are aware, I've been unavoidably detained in south-east London for the past 37 days. And now, finally released and a stone lighter (I highly recommend the Belmarsh Diet), I thought I'd share with you a short argument against statutory regulation of the press which I advanced at the Oxford Union on July 2.
Speaking for the proposition, "This house believes that any regulation of the press is an unacceptable restriction of freedom of speech," below are the words which the eight minutes allowed. Two days later, Andy Coulson, my former editor and I were sentenced, along with others, by Mr Justice Saunders. Just a short point here. Despite being left in a 'Category A' prison, Andy Coulson is in good spirits and is getting on well with his fellow inmates. Reports that he has been attacked are totally untrue. We have been in each others' company for between 22 to 24 hours per day and I have witnessed nothing other than the hand of friendship to both of us. We would like to put the record straight on this.


The ARGUMENT

Before I advance the argument for the proposition, let me first acknowledge how we, the Press have got matters spectacularly wrong, speaking as I do, from the vantage point of a man in the vortex of the most cataclysmic storm in the history of newspapers.

There have been corrupt payments to public officials – soldiers and police officers – in return for stories. Many of these stories were not in the public interest. Mere tittle-tattle. No justification. There have been gross invasions of privacy. And there has been phone hacking. A practise which has outraged a large section of the population and in which, to my regret, I was personally drawn into.

So what is the cure?

Ask a lawyer, and they will tell you: “More law”.

Ask many politicians, and they will tell you: “More state control”.

This is the default position of every lawyer and politician. More law. More political influence.

But law begets more law. Laws are seldom repealed but tend to morph into multi-headed Hydras. And state control of the press, by whatever statutory instrument you may care to mention, is something we should instinctively mistrust, as our ancestors have for 300 years.The effect of any form of state regulation of the press will have a stultifying effect on that most precious and hard won privilege – freedom of speech.

The Leveson Inquiry has already had a damaging effect.

The recent conviction of Rolf HKKHarris was jeopardised by his secret arrest made possible by the Leveson Inquiry.

In November 2012, police searched Harris’s home and removed computer equipment and other items. He was interviewed under caution without being arrested. Newspapers merely reported that an unnamed television presenter in his 80s had been questioned.

Ironically, the questioning took place on the day the Leveson Report was published. One of its controversial suggestions was that except in exceptional circumstances, ‘the names or identifying details of those who are arrested or suspected of a crime should not be released to the Press or public’.

A few days later, Harris’s lawyers, Harbottle & Lewis, sent a letter to at least one newspaper threatening dire consequences in the event of their client being identified, using the Leveson Report as their justification.

After Harris was arrested in March last year, Harbottle & Lewis despatched a threatening email to the Mail on Sunday containing similar threats, claiming that the public  interest would not be served by naming him. The following month, Harris was finally identified by newspapers and more than a dozen victims subsequently came forward, nine of whom testified at Harris’s trial.Justice was served, in part, by flouting Leveson, not by slavishly donning the shackles of his recommendations.

This position is backed by, Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, who said that Harris’s conviction may not have been possible  if the sexual abuser had succeeded in keeping his name out of public view.

Even the merest hint of the threat of outside regulation and one cabinet minister, the Culture Secretary Maria Miller, jumped on the bandwagon and was using it to crush a newspaper investigation into her expenses. Miller's special adviser phoned the Daily Telegraph prior to publication in an attempt to warn it off. According to the paper, she issued a veiled threat by reminding it of Miller's role in enacting proposals in the Leveson Report on press regulation.

Even before external press regulation was properly debated, this politician couldn’t stop herself from using the threat of it to bury her misdeeds. She failed. And she resigned, shortly after the paper broadcast a taped call of her special adviser making the threat.

Last week on BBC’s Newsnight, the Spectator assistant editor Isabel Hardman warned, grimly, that the number of politicians calling her office to demand they tone down their negative political stories, has grown considerably since Leveson.

David Wooding, the Sun on Sunday’s political editor, says important political investigations are being, to use his very words, “sanitised out of existence. Or simply spiked.” And if the chill wind of censorship is being felt on the newsroom floor of the Sun, one of the most fearless publications in the world, just think how afraid the local press are feeling now. How daunting it is for them to probe the misdemeanours of their local council and council officials and hold them to account, exposing wrong doing to their electorate.

All this since the THREAT of outside regulation mark you, not the implementation of it. With politicians using the threat of state regulation to beat your press into submission, just think what they would do if we gave them the lethal weapon of state regulation, forged in the law courts and finely honed on the ancient mastheads of our democratic free press.

For that is what it is. Your press. Not mine, a mere former custodian of part of it. And not those who seek to control it for their own political ends. YOUR press. It’s an important mindset. The British press belongs to you. It’s yours. You cherish it because you know it speaks its mind. And in these days of slick, carefully staged managed PR campaigns in business, politics and sport, it is a valuable free voice. A vital free voice.

Otto von Bismarck remarked, “Politics is the art of the possible”. If political interference in the British press was made possible, it would be artfully and stealthily executed.

The misdemeanours at the News of the World have been used as an excuse by some to rush in a system which prevents papers from exposing scandalous behaviour by figures in the public eye. It is dressed up as a moral crusade about the right to privacy in the face of illegal actions by journalists. It is championed by celebrities such as Steve Coogan and Hugh Grant, who once courted publicity to boost their careers. But seek to silence us when we expose their drug taking or their arrest for kerb crawling.

It is it right that cabal of disaffected celebrities and elitist, left wing quasi academics to dictate what we should or should not read like some latter-day Lord Chamberlain?

So what of that cure?

The cure is taking place as we speak. The criminal wrong doing by journalists has been investigated by 195 police officers for three years. As well as the trial which has just concluded, at least 12 more trials are in the pipeline, involving up to 40 accused. They are among 96 journalists arrested since 2011. In two days time, I will be sentenced by an Old Bailey judge, alongside Andy Coulson, my former editor, Greg Miskiw my boss, and my colleagues James Weatherup and Dan Evans for listening to voicemails.

I show say this to demonstrate that the law works as it is. I can tell you from rather painful first hand experience, that wrong doing is being severely punished. It is far more effective than moral Puritanism. Or a Royal Charter, which may allow undue political interference and wipe out the industry with £1 million fines. Of beat it into subservience with growing powers and influence in years to come, under less savoury political regimes than we enjoy at present.

You don’t need your peers in the form of Hacked Off or your elected politicians dictating what you can and cannot read and lecturing your press on how to behave. You have the police. You have the law. And you have the judiciary. It is enough. And I am the living proof of it.
The Oxford Mail's report here. http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11319498._I_prove_legal_system_works__says_phone_hacking_reporter/
http://www.nevillethurlbeck.com/

It has not stopped them reporting Sir Cliff today has it !!! and believe me they do not raid high profile [ one down from royalty figures lightly ] there must be absolute proof .

 PS does my old post about being in Portugal make more sense now !!!!

On its plus side there is a truly massive entertainment story that the press are "respectfully" not covering due to its medical connotation.

I'm sorry, but IMO Neville Thurlbecks assertion that the press is MY press is utter rubbish. It is not MY press , because if it was it would not be owned and manipulated by vested interests. It would be not be printing rubbish just to maintain circulation numbers.

stillsloppingout wrote:It has not stopped them reporting Sir Cliff today has it !!! and believe me they do not raid high profile [ one down from royalty figures lightly ] there must be absolute proof .

 PS does my old post about being in Portugal make more sense now !!!!

Very interesting articles.

The problem for the TV media and the press ( who sometimes laughingly refer to ' Fleet Street ' - bow your head in shame Andrew Neild) is that they are being superceded by the Internet and its supply of information.

Rupert Paywall Murdoch and his fellow Press Barons are being sidelined by the new medium of blogs twitter and so on so the old saw of we do this because it is in the Public Interest no longer holds as the public interest has changed over the years.

The music recording industry dillied and dallied for many years over copyright issues and lost a fortune. If the Media as a whole don't get a grip of things they are headed the same way. The TV for instance will not be watched by the current upcoming generations in the same numbers as  I watched Morecambe and Wise Xmas Specials. The audience isn't there and it is not shrinking - it is more distracted and diverted and has the whole world to look at and for. Therefore which member of the Royal Family is doing what will not interest them in the least. Whereas the new/old Royalty pop stars and movie stars will.


This really is the power of the internet from so called Conspiracy theories to alternative news and there is no way to stop it. The only way that can be done is to turn the Internet off or restrict access. Big problem with that is that the advertisers are heading the same way as the audience and they will not wear it.

I do have sympathy with the so called ' Little People ' ( i.e. those who do not seek fame and fortune or the limelight but I hold none for those who wish to appear in stories that only show us how wonderful they are ( and I think Steve Coogan is a great comic actor) but you stick your face in front of me and ask me to like what you do. If sometimes I don't like what you do then you have to take the rough with the smooth.

As we are now in the era of Politics being replaced by Moralism ( relatively or otherwise ) what the U.S does today Britain does later and the state of the News channels in the UK and the US is a very sad tale indeed. Nevermind celebrities being lied about - that is ephemeral - they are stars for goodness sake that's what they do for a living - it's called pretending so no problem with that. What politicians do is a different matter and the question of whether these people are telling the truth affects every aspect of everyones lives. At the moment from ISIS ( media speak - Islamic State ) and Gaza as well as the Ukraine and the plane disaster appears to me as a complete barefaced lie as to what is actually happening and the reasons and reactions of Governments to these crises.

Therefore whatever Steve Coogan and his acolytes get up to is nothing compared to the utter lies that is emanating from the so called MSM at the moment from the Economy to World affairs and our intrepid tabloid and broadsheet reporters think what they say is important? t's that bad that even phone hackers think they are doing us all a favour. As does Rebekka Brooks.

Does anyone in the press freedom discussion understand the irony here? Namely that most of the news stories these days don't come from dodgy PI's hidden behind cameras and diving in dustbins. Or even from the Greg Kettles of Her Majesty's press. It comes from the people on the internet using mobile cameras and

Even the US State Department quotes from the Twitter/ Facebbok sites to defend it's opinions on what is happening in the Ukraine. What they are saying doesn't need to be true. It's just the saying of it that counts. Get your PR in first.

The MSM are getting left behind and they don't like it. Levenson hasn't got a clue. Niether has Rupert I'm afraid and he's a sharp operator.

Thank god for the internet and social media. PR is now back where it should be, in the hands of the public.

Harriet94 wrote:Thank god for the internet and social media. PR is now back where it should be, in the hands of the public.

 

Perhaps Mr Smith is 'entitled' to a 'retraction' regarding RM but.....................

Until he or his TWO family members, who we are told collaborated in drawing up the Smithman e-fits DCI Redwood is so enamoured about, can EXPLAIN 'HOW AND WHEN' the FULL FRONTAL FACE e-fits came into being, as NONE of the Smith family, having admitted, SAW the child carrying man's FACE, i'll reserve my judgement.

Will the UK Madia be 'highlighting' the MET Police's KEY, and some say now ONLY, 'WITNESS', Mr Smith asking for a 'correction' anytime soon?

They normally 'jump on' ANYTHING Maddie 'related' don't they?

Be very 'odd' if they did NOT mention a key witness's request for a correction, about a Maddie 'claim' story, wouldn't it?

XTC wrote:

stillsloppingout wrote:It has not stopped them reporting Sir Cliff today has it !!! and believe me they do not raid high profile [ one down from royalty figures lightly ] there must be absolute proof .

 PS does my old post about being in Portugal make more sense now !!!!

Very interesting articles.

The problem for the TV media and the press ( who sometimes laughingly refer to ' Fleet Street ' - bow your head in shame Andrew Neild) is that they are being superceded by the Internet and its supply of information.

Rupert Paywall Murdoch and his fellow Press Barons are being sidelined by the new medium of blogs twitter and so on so the old saw of we do this because it is in the Public Interest no longer holds as the public interest has changed over the years.

The music recording industry dillied and dallied for many years over copyright issues and lost a fortune. If the Media as a whole don't get a grip of things they are headed the same way. The TV for instance will not be watched by the current upcoming generations in the same numbers as  I watched Morecambe and Wise Xmas Specials. The audience isn't there and it is not shrinking - it is more distracted and diverted and has the whole world to look at and for. Therefore which member of the Royal Family is doing what will not interest them in the least. Whereas the new/old Royalty pop stars and movie stars will.


This really is the power of the internet from so called Conspiracy theories to alternative news and there is no way to stop it. The only way that can be done is to turn the Internet off or restrict access. Big problem with that is that the advertisers are heading the same way as the audience and they will not wear it.

I do have sympathy with the so called ' Little People ' ( i.e. those who do not seek fame and fortune or the limelight but I hold none for those who wish to appear in stories that only show us how wonderful they are ( and I think Steve Coogan is a great comic actor) but you stick your face in front of me and ask me to like what you do. If sometimes I don't like what you do then you have to take the rough with the smooth.

As we are now in the era of Politics being replaced by Moralism ( relatively or otherwise ) what the U.S does today Britain does later and the state of the News channels in the UK and the US is a very sad tale indeed. Nevermind celebrities being lied about - that is ephemeral - they are stars for goodness sake that's what they do for a living - it's called pretending so no problem with that. What politicians do is a different matter and the question of whether these people are telling the truth affects every aspect of everyones lives. At the moment from ISIS ( media speak - Islamic State ) and Gaza as well as the Ukraine and the plane disaster appears to me as a complete barefaced lie as to what is actually happening and the reasons and reactions of Governments to these crises.

Therefore whatever Steve Coogan and his acolytes get up to is nothing compared to the utter lies that is emanating from the so called MSM at the moment from the Economy to World affairs and our intrepid tabloid and broadsheet reporters think what they say is important? t's that bad that even phone hackers think they are doing us all a favour. As does Rebekka Brooks.

Does anyone in the press freedom discussion understand the irony here? Namely that most of the news stories these days don't come from dodgy PI's hidden behind cameras and diving in dustbins. Or even from the Greg Kettles of Her Majesty's press. It comes from the people on the internet using mobile cameras and

Even the US State Department quotes from the Twitter/ Facebbok sites to defend it's opinions on what is happening in the Ukraine. What they are saying doesn't need to be true. It's just the saying of it that counts. Get your PR in first.

The MSM are getting left behind and they don't like it. Levenson hasn't got a clue. Niether has Rupert I'm afraid and he's a sharp operator.

I have enjoyed reading your posts, XTC - thank you.

Thank you also, tasprin.

Some great reading between you.

Being late to the case and not of the UK, the Leveson enquiry had largely passed me by.

Steve Coogan - a brilliant Alan Partridge - John Pilger - I'd read some great books by him.

Nick Davies, too - what's going on - I shall read up on this when I get a chance.

Interesting stuff.

Press freedom and regulation is, to some extent, a smokescreen, if people really think that it is only forced by Government.

Max Clifford was a reputation manager. Does anyone think that Clifford may have managed to restrict what the press would print?

If he could not, then what was the point of so many high profile people paying him so much money?

Maybe, not everyone was hiring him to promote them. Possibly, some of his client's may have done something, that they wanted to hide from the public view.

Echo.

Round and around it goes.

Who?What?Where? wrote:Press freedom and regulation is, to some extent, a smokescreen, if people really think that it is only forced by Government.

Max Clifford was a reputation manager. Does anyone think that Clifford may have managed to restrict what the press would print?

If he could not, then what was the point of so many high profile people paying him so much money?

Maybe, not everyone was hiring him to promote them. Possibly, some of his client's may have done something, that they wanted to hide from the public view.

Echo.

Round and around it goes.

Good points.

In my opinion there are probably only two ways to get what you want in life.

Persuasion and fear.

Max Clifford and his fellow reputation managers all have operated on the basis of fear. These sorts of people are by definition charmless and unpersuasive.

In the media it strikes me as the opposite of the old maxim of : It's not what you know - it's who you know.

There it is: It's what you know about whom.

One thing Max Clifford knew was that some people he knew about  knew about him.

Thereby voiding Mutally Assured Self Destruction.

As we see when thieves fall out it tends to have dire consequences.

There are many more in the pipeline that's for sure.

If this Times libel business is on and Murdoch wants revenge on the British Establishment then what he  knows will become apparent maybe?

As usual it all takes time.


p.s. missbeetle: Thanks for your kind words.

p.p.s. Blacksmith's latest offering is very good but the ' ongoing ' investigation doesn't seem to be (on ) going anywhere.

Opinion though and I hope I'm wrong.

"In my opinion there are probably only two ways to get what you want in life.
Persuasion and fear."

I have to disagree. There is at least a third way. Just tell the truth.

I do not think that clifford and his clients are, or ever were,  interested in the real truth. They seem to be too fixated upon how important, (they have managed to convince people) they are, and how much money and power they hoped to derived from that illusion.

Low level thinking IMHO. Nowhere near good enough.

Who?What?Where? wrote:"In my opinion there are probably only two ways to get what you want in life.
Persuasion and fear."

I have to disagree. There is at least a third way. Just tell the truth.

I do not think that clifford and his clients are, or ever were,  interested in the real truth. They seem to be too fixated upon how important, (they have managed to convince people) they are, and how much money and power they hoped to derived from that illusion.

Low level thinking IMHO. Nowhere near good enough.

Unfortunately for the Public their right to know and the Public Interest are not served by the MSM.

You own a newspaper or a TV station for a reason and it is not owned in order to assist in the Public interest or even get near the truth.

Very few newspapers make a decent profit. Therefore if you wish to spend an arm and a leg to secure one it will be to shape the political agenda and thereby shape the economic agenda of the proprieter. TV Stations ( Fox News as an example ) are no different. The stations and papers may use PR to pretend that they have the publics interests at heart when it is Rupert Murdoch influencing US political and economic policy. No different over here neither.

Of course Max Clifford won't be interested in the truth - To plagiarise Mr Amaral - Clifford was  interested in selling the truth of the lie. It's always easier to sell to a saleman and Clifford and his fellow reputation managers were/ are still selling their lie to fellow liars or fellow salesmen who also peddle lies. THe MSM then play the game of passing these lies on to the public.

3 things off the top of my head re: Lying by ommission ( there are many ) by the MSM.

1. The Malaysian airliner in Ukraine.
2. The Enquiry into  child abuse allegedly by politicians.
3. The anti government protests in  Kiev. ( The Maydan)

All are missing from the MSM debate.

Just think what other ommissions are being made.

The EU / Global warming / Climate / Quantatiive Easing /, agenda , has to be one of the biggest scams that I have ever recognised in my life.

Control and the continuance of their (supposed) power,  is obviously, what they are all about.

The lack of humility being displayed by these people, is truly staggering.

Who?What?Where? wrote:The EU / Global warming / Climate / Quantatiive Easing /, agenda , has to be one of the biggest scams that I have ever recognised in my life.

Control and the continuance of their (supposed) power,  is obviously, what they are all about.

The lack of humility being displayed by these people, is truly staggering.

Quite

Here's the curious thing about the Madeleine case

You can go on all the SM websites and make comments about The yanks the Commies the Zionists and many other genuinely nasty and gruesome events
around the world and who is to blame for the mess.

You can comment on all of those things near enough anywhere.

Yet a minor matter like how Madeleine went missing and who might be to blame is a comment free one.


That's always been the Complete  Mystery about this case to me.

Relative to the big issues in the world this should be tiny and it isn't.