BBC Buries Criticism of Guardian On Snowden Security Leaks

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC spent 10 days, using each newscast, political, and current affairs programme to continue an unbridled attack on the Daily Mail for publishing an article that questioned whether Miliband's father hated Britain.

Yet when the Guardian publishes secret files that were stolen by a fugitive US agent, that puts our national security, and many lives in danger, the BBC does its best to justify it.

What really has to happen in this country before action is taken to put the BBC out of business? They are a menace, a cancer on our society. Everything about their self-promoting interest mindset eats away at real freedom, peace, and civilisation.

PM backs spy chief's attack on Guardian: Security expert warned leaks risk 'widespread loss of life' but BBC buries criticism of Left-wing paper
PM's spokesman said MI5's Andrew Parker made an 'excellent speech'
The spy chief blasted The Guardian's publication of secret material
Security officials say the expose could lead to UK lives being lost
By JAMES SLACK

David Cameron yesterday joined the attacks on the Guardian for publishing secret files that have put national security at risk.

The Prime Minister threw his full weight behind MI5 director-general Andrew Parker who has warned the leaks are a ‘gift’ to terrorists.
MPs and security experts weighed in too, claiming the newspaper had exposed the UK’s intelligence secrets to Islamist fanatics and foreign spies.

They said Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger had been naive to think it was harmless to publish the documents stolen by fugitive US agent Edward Snowden. Security sources pointed to remarks from the UK’s deputy national security adviser suggesting damage has already been done to Britain.

Oliver Robbins, who reports directly to Mr Cameron, warned that revealing the techniques GCHQ uses to spy on terrorists may cause ‘widespread loss of life’.

A No 10 spokesman – when asked whether Mr Cameron agreed with Mr Parker’s comments – said: ‘The Prime Minister thinks it was an excellent speech and we are, as you would expect, always keeping under review the measures that are needed to contribute to keeping our country safe. I would happily point you to all parts of the director general’s speech.’

In another development, there were last night accusations of editorial bias at the BBC, which initially ignored the scathing criticisms of the Guardian.
The corporation later offered Mr Rusbridger an interview on Radio Four’s World at One to defend his paper.

Guardian has handed a gift to terrorists', warns MI5 chief: Left-wing paper's leaks caused 'greatest damage to western security in history' say Whitehall insiders

He denied putting lives at risk and – defying security officials – said he would continue publishing top secret information, which the paper has been splashing across its front pages since June.

Mr Rusbridger, who critics claimed was given an easy interview, said: ‘We are working slowly and responsibly but as we discover further stories that we think merit the debate, the debate that everyone says is necessary, then we will go on publishing.’

Security officials and MPs dismissed the suggestion that the newspaper was capable of knowing what would and would not assist Britain’s enemies.
They pointed to a devastating legal submission drawn up by Mr Robbins in August.

He said: ‘It is impossible for a journalist alone to form a proper judgment about what disclosure of protectively marked intelligence does or does not damage national security.

‘The fragmentary nature of intelligence means that even a seemingly innocuous piece of information can provide important clues to individuals involved in extremism or terrorism.

‘There is therefore a real risk that that publication or disclosure could cause unintended damage to that national security.
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‘It is worth reiterating the point that real damage has in fact already been done to UK national security by the media revelations (both in the UK and internationally).’

He said the leaking of the kind of top secret information held by the Guardian was likely to ‘lead directly to widespread loss of life’ and ‘to cause exceptionally grave damage to the effectiveness of security of the UK’.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of Westminster’s intelligence and security committee, also backed Mr Parker’s speech, which contained a warning that several thousand fanatics living in Britain see the public as a legitimate target.

The former foreign secretary dismissed the idea that Snowden or journalists at the Guardian could judge which information it was safe to publish.

‘When we know that Snowden has over 50,000 classified documents relevant to UK interests the idea that he or others would be able identify which are damaging to national security is naive,’ he said.

‘Even knowing the technology that is available to GCHQ or MI5 or MI6 is valuable. Some of these terrorists are very, very smart. It’s not like the old days when communication could only be by letter or telephone call.

‘Unless they [the security services] are at the cutting edge of modern technology they will be behind the terrorists who are smart on encryption and trying to conceal what they are doing.’

Charlie Edwards, of the respected Royal United Services Institute, claimed the Guardian had been ‘wrong’ to ‘deliberately expose’ the UK’s intelligence secrets.

He said: ‘The leaks we have seen from Snowden in the Guardian will provide information to terrorists, but also aggressive foreign intelligence agencies operating in the UK.’

The independent MP Patrick Mercer, a former Downing Street security adviser, said intelligence data should not be published if it compromised public security.

‘If in any way our security is compromised by revealing too much, that’s a mistake,’ he added. ‘Just imagine if we had revealed the whole Enigma secret during the Second World War.That might have been in the public’s interest – but we’d have lost the war.’

Mr Robbins’ remarks were made in a submission to judges in the case of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was stopped at Heathrow in possession of at least 58,000 classified stolen documents.

He had been ferrying them from a Snowden associate in Germany to Brazil, where he shares a home with Greenwald, the author of many of the controversial articles.

Mr Robbins said the material was ‘highly likely to describe techniques crucial in life-saving counter-terrorist operations, and other activities vital to UK national security’.
Snowden is currently holed up in Russia, with temporary political asylum.

[Teddy Bear]

Damian Thompson at the Telegraph makes the observation that when the BBC reported about MI5's warning about terrorists and Snowden leaks, it made not one mention of the Guardian.

The only time the BBC has linked the Guardian to this story is to allow the paper to justify its behaviour.
Like with these stories:
Guardian's Alan Rusbridger defends Snowden leaks

Greenwald: 'Nothing we published endangers security

Guardian defends leaks as MI5 accuses newspaper of damage

Notice a particular slant to the BBC reporting?

BBC reports MI5's warning about terrorists and Snowden leaks. Not one mention of the Guardian
By Damian Thompson



Here's the BBC news report (above) on the ferocious speech by new MI5 chief Andrew Parker about terrorists taking advantage of the Snowden leaks. It carries the byline of BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. It begins:

MI5 chief Andrew Parker warns of Islamist threat to UK public
Thousands of Islamist extremists in the UK see the British public as a legitimate target for attacks, the director general of MI5 has warned.

Andrew Parker was making his first public speech since taking over as head of the UK Security Service in April.

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan and Yemen present "the most direct and immediate threats to the UK," he said.
He also warned of the damage done to British security by the leaking of classified documents from GCHQ.

OK, fair enough. Now it's time for Gardner to mention, as we did in our report this morning, that the Snowden files were published by the Guardian, despite pleas from the Government not to disclose intelligence techniques.

But no. Not one mention in 800 words. I found this so odd that I even asked Microsoft Word to search for the word "Guardian" in the article in case I'd missed it. Nothing. Can someone explain this extraordinary omission?

[Teddy Bear]

Stephen Glover examines just how dismissive to real concerns the Guardian has been in publishing these stolen security files.

This too, is what the BBC is complicit in.

Stupendous arrogance: By risking lives, I say again, the Guardian is floundering far out of its depth in realms where no newspaper should venture
by STEPHEN GLOVER

Like most journalists, I am often somewhat suspi-cious of our security services. They are forever trying to persuade politicians to give them greater powers, supposedly vital to protect the public.
Senior spooks were behind the Labour Government’s attempt in 2005 to introduce detention without trial for up to 90 days, which was draconian. A compromise of 28 days was finally agreed, later reduced to 14 days. The State does not seem to have fallen apart.

Similarly, the security services have been pressing the Government to introduce the so-called snoopers’ charter, which would give them more powers to spy on emails and internet usage. Largely owing to Lib Dem opposition, this scheme has fortunately got stuck in the sand.

And then there was the performance of spy chiefs before the Iraq War. They were leant on by Tony Blair and his crew to make more of their very meagre intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction than was warranted. We now know that these weapons did not exist.

So it is reasonable sometimes to entertain doubts about the security services. They’re not saints, and they will always seek more powers than either Parliament or the majority of people are likely to want to give them.

But we can’t ignore the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker, who said in a speech on Tuesday that the publication in the Guardian newspaper of confidential files leaked by U. S. fugitive Edward Snowden has caused ‘enormous damage’ to the capabilities of our security services.

One senior Whitehall source went even further, telling the Mail that the leaks to the Guardian have caused the greatest damage to Western security in history. The newspaper is accused of helping to produce a ‘handbook’ for terrorists.

According to Mr Parker, there are several thousand Islamic terrorists in this country who ‘see the British people as a legitimate target’. The publication of top-secret information about GCHQ surveillance has given these people the knowledge to evade detection when planning an atrocity.

Mr Parker dismissed as ‘fanciful’ the Guardian’s suggestion that MI5 wants ‘to operate intensive scrutiny of thousands’. MI5 is interested only in the bad guys, and thanks to the Guardian — though Mr Parker did not actually name the newspaper — it’s going to be much more difficult to apprehend them.

Oliver Robbins, Britain’s deputy national security adviser, has been no less forthright. He says that the Guardian has ‘already done real damage’ to Britain by its revelations, and that information still held by the newspaper could lead to a ‘widespread loss of life’.

In August, police at Heathrow seized at least 58,000 documents from Edward Snowden carried on memory sticks and hard discs by the Brazilian David Miranda on behalf of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been at the forefront of the newspaper’s disclosures.

Mr Robbins has previously suggested that these documents, which have probably been replicated many times, are so sensitive that British agents have had to be moved for their own safety.

These are grave charges. The Guardian is being accused of putting at risk not only the lives of agents but also potentially the lives of ordinary British people, whom MI5 will now find it more difficult to protect. Divide the accusations in two, and then halve them again, and they are still mind-boggling.

So what is the response? At the time of writing, the all-powerful BBC has only parenthetically mentioned that the newspaper faces very serious charges, and has made the most feeble attempts to hold the paper or its editor, Alan Rusbridger, to account.

You might have thought that Mr Rusbridger would be quaking in his boots. Or at least apologetic. Or perhaps ruminative. Not a bit of it.
In a BBC radio interview yesterday, he loftily insisted that his newspaper had been justified in publishing Snowden’s leaks — and intended to go on doing so.

This is the same Mr Rusbridger who has previously ignored pleas from the security services to stop publishing the revelations, and who has proudly declared that his newspaper has held back stories which it deemed potentially damaging.

But, as Mr Robbins has pertinently asked, how would he know? He is a newspaperman, not a security expert. The high-handedness is amazing. Mr Rusbridger thinks he can determine which stories might harm national security — and which will not. According to the experts, he is hopelessly unqualified to make such a judgment.
Needless to say, I don’t accuse Mr Rusbridger of any lack of patriotism. I am sure he loves his country as much as anyone. But he does stand accused of the most stupendous arrogance and presumption.

Seven weeks ago, after David Miranda had been arrested at Heathrow, and the hard discs and memory sticks removed from him, I suggested that the Guardian appeared ‘to have entered very dangerous waters where journalists who care for their country should not venture’.

Far from turning back, Mr Rusbridger has steamed full ahead, and is now in even more dangerous waters. And if his patriotism is beyond question, the same cannot be said of Glenn Greenwald, his lead journalist in this operation.

Mr Greenwald is an American citizen based in Brazil with no ties whatsoever to Britain — and no affection for it. After his partner, David Miranda, had been held for nine hours at Heathrow, Mr Greenwald threatened this country.

‘I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now,’ he said. ‘I have many documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did.’

How can Mr Rusbridger associate himself with such a man, let alone continue to employ him? Almost unbelievably, he has admitted that he had no idea what Mr Miranda was carrying when he was arrested at Heathrow, though the Guardian was paying for his ticket.

Well, now we know what Mr Miranda had on him — information so incendiary (though he was probably unaware of it) that British agents have had to be moved. Isn’t it clear that the Guardian is floundering far out of its depth, in realms where no newspaper should ever venture?

Never forget that Edward Snowden, who remains holed up in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, stole the information he has handed on to the Guardian. He has probably also passed it to Russia and China (he was earlier in Hong Kong), both of which powers are not very friendly to Britain.

More even than WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose occasionally damaging and often embarrassing revelations the Guardian published, Snowden is a menace to British, and Western, interests. A small proportion of what he revealed may have been in the public interest, but it is greatly outweighed by the damage he has done.

The fact is that states do have necessary secrets, and the best interests of Britain are not served by sharing those secrets with our enemies, be they foreign powers or home-grown Islamic extremists.
Mr Rusbridger won’t be made to answer for his actions by the BBC. The security services have been pretty indulgent to him, even if they did insist during the summer that the hard drives of some Guardian computers containing secret information be destroyed.

No, my only hope is that he will finally consult his own conscience. Despite everything, I believe he is a decent man. I urge him to descend from the misty slopes of Mount Olympus which he inhabits, and to put an end to this shameful business.

[Teddy Bear]

This article in today's Daily Mail again shows the hypocrisy of the BBC following its rampage of the Mail last week, in rallying for its 'best mate' the Guardian, despite the severe gravity of the Guardian's actions.

The paper that helps Britain's enemies

By Daily Mail Comment

Forget hacking voicemails or slipping payments to officials for stories that may or may not be in the public interest.

Set to one side even (dare we say it?) this paper’s provocative headline 12 days ago, questioning how a long-dead Marxist, who wanted to smash all the traditions and institutions which make Britain British, could be said to love his country.

By any objective yardstick, don’t such crimes and controversies pale beside the accusation levelled against the Guardian on Tuesday by the new head of MI5?

Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a graver charge against a newspaper than that it has given succour to our country’s enemies and endangered all our lives by handing terrorists ‘the gift they need to evade us and strike at will’.

Yet so said Andrew Parker, in his first speech as our spy chief, which yesterday was significantly endorsed by No10.

So isn’t it staggering that the BBC, after spending all last week trumpeting Ed Miliband’s attack on this paper over our charge that his father’s Marxist views validated one of the most evil regimes in history, could hardly bring itself for much of yesterday to report Mr Parker’s devastating indictment of the Guardian?

The problem, and it’s worse under the new director general, is that a wall of prejudice surrounds Broadcasting House – a belief that the Right merits relentless attack, while the BBC’s soulmates on the liberal Left must always be protected.

Let us be clear. The Mail has never believed that MI5 and GCHQ deserve unquestioning support.

In this column, we were highly critical of their demands for the power to detain suspects without trial for 90 days.

We led the charge against MI6’s cosiness with Labour over the dodgy dossier on Iraq. And we have opposed secret courts and the so-called snoopers’ charter.

But at the same time, we accept that the security services would be guilty of dereliction of duty if they failed to monitor those who pose a threat to the UK.

And we have always argued that a line needs to be drawn between the civil liberties we treasure and the interests of national security.

We believe the Guardian, with lethal irresponsibility, has crossed that line by printing tens of thousands of words describing the secret techniques used to monitor terrorists.

Such is certainly the view of UK national security adviser Oliver Robbins, who says the paper has ‘already done real damage’, while the information it still holds is likely to ‘lead directly to widespread loss of life’.

Indeed, so incendiary are these documents that British agents have had to be moved for their protection.

Yet, almost as astonishing as the BBC’s reticence, the editor of the Guardian now says he will continue to release the material, arguing that he will take care to publish nothing that endangers lives.

But how, in the name of sanity, can he know? He’s a journalist, not an expert on security.

As for his paper’s attack on us over the Labour leader’s father, let us say something in Ralph Miliband’s favour.

True, he hated so much about this country that he wanted a workers’ revolution to overturn everything from the monarchy to parliament, property rights and the common law. And, yes, his ideas chimed more with Stalin’s than with Churchill’s during the Cold War.

But he fought for Britain in the war. And never once, as far as we are aware, did he give practical help to our enemies.

Nor was he ever accused by the head of our security services of putting British lives at risk.

Isn’t that a great deal more than can be said for the Guardian?

[Teddy Bear]

The Daily Mail knows better than anybody how relentless the BBC were, using every semi-relevant programme, to pursue their demonization of the Mail in support of Miliband.

Yet when confronted with their avoidance to report the condemnation issued against the Guardian, A BBC spokesman said the fact Mr Katz used to work for the Guardian had ‘absolutely no bearing’ on his editorial judgment.

He added: ‘Newsnight didn’t cover the story on Tuesday because it was covered thoroughly on the News at Ten and we didn’t feel we could add significantly to that coverage, and because Newsnight devoted 30 minutes to a report, interview and debate about many of the same issues last week.

‘This is an on-going story which BBC News has covered as it developed, including the criticisms from Andrew Parker, and we will continue to cover it.’

Reading that I feel like I'm covered with slime. I need a shower.

How the BBC buried the story: MI5 attack on Left-wing paper's leaks played down

• BBC downplays MI5 chief's scathing condemnation of The Guardian
  
• Newsnight editor is former Guardian executive Ian Katz
  
• 'They appear to be protecting Left-wing friends' - Tory MP

By Alasdair Glennie

MI5’s scathing criticisms of The Guardian newspaper were underplayed by the BBC, it was claimed last night.

The corporation’s flagship current affairs show Newsnight, which is edited by former Guardian executive Ian Katz, failed to report spy chief Andrew Parker’s speech on Tuesday.

Other BBC reports, including the News at Ten, online articles and radio bulletins, referred to his speech but made no mention of his key claim that the Left-leaning newspaper had done ‘enormous damage’.

Tory MP Conor Burns, who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, said: ‘It is extraordinary that the biggest security story for a generation wasn’t deemed worthy of comment by the BBC’s leading investigative news programme.

‘There seems to be a clear conflict of interest when its editor has so recently taken the Guardian’s shilling. The whole tone of the BBC’s coverage of this issue seems to indicate clear editorial bias.

‘They appear to be protecting their Left-wing friends’.

The BBC did not change its online coverage to reflect the row until Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger publicly defended his newspaper yesterday. He appeared on Radio 4’s World at One programme, where he was largely unchallenged, to say his paper’s coverage had prompted ‘necessary debate’.

Only then did the BBC update its online news articles to reflect the Guardian’s critical role in the leaks with the headline, ‘Guardian to publish more Snowden intelligence revelations’.

Before joining Newsnight last month, Mr Katz worked for the Guardian for 23 years and served as its deputy editor.

Mr Parker made his speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall on Tuesday.

His unambiguous warnings about ‘terrorists’ contrasted with the BBC’s reluctance to use the word in its reports. The corporation was criticised during its coverage of the recent Kenyan massacre for describing the perpetrators as ‘militants’.



Although the speech was covered by the BBC’s News at Ten on Tuesday, it ignored Mr Parker’s criticisms of the Guardian.

Instead, reporter Gordon Corera chose to focus on Mr Parker’s general warnings that the security of the UK was under threat and made no reference to the newspaper.

At 10.30pm, Newsnight chose to ignore the subject. Surprisingly, the current affairs show did find time to screen an interview with Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon.

Online, the BBC news website’s main article on Mr Parker’s speech – written by security correspondent Frank Gardner – also glossed over Mr Parker’s criticisms.

Entitled ‘MI5 chief Andrew Parker warns of Islamist threat to UK’, it made only a passing reference to the role of the Guardian in the affair.

The following morning, news bulletins on BBC Radio 4 failed to mention the newspaper at all.

Tory MP Rob Wilson said: ‘The Guardian is being accused of putting the safety of the public in danger, but the BBC has done virtually nothing to inform its own licence fee payers about it.

‘The behaviour and the regulation of the Press is once again in the public eye, but the BBC is in danger of presenting a very partial and distorted view of the behaviour of newspapers.’

A BBC spokesman said the fact Mr Katz used to work for the Guardian had ‘absolutely no bearing’ on his editorial judgment.

He added: ‘Newsnight didn’t cover the story on Tuesday because it was covered thoroughly on the News at Ten and we didn’t feel we could add significantly to that coverage, and because Newsnight devoted 30 minutes to a report, interview and debate about many of the same issues last week.

‘This is an on-going story which BBC News has covered as it developed, including the criticisms from Andrew Parker, and we will continue to cover it.’

[Teddy Bear]

For me, this article addresses the very core of how skewed the BBC truly is in their mindset and agenda, as revealed by their recently evidenced hypocrisy.

I find the left wing mentality as shown by the BBC, Guardian, et al, and the Islamic extremist share a particular trait:

The latter believes that whatever they think is right, and anybody who disagrees with them deserve death. So much easier than believing that there are many ways to view life, and see the differences as enriching oneself, particularly for those who have low self esteem.

The former is really not different except they will bring about the death of their 'enemies', or those that don't think like them, in a far more insidious way, like they're really not responsible.

So which is the REAL sin: to criticise the Marxist views of Red Ed's father or to help terrorists and put British lives at risk?
PAUL DACRE, Editor of the Mail, answers the paper's critics

Out in the real world, it was a pretty serious week for news.

The U.S. was on the brink of budget default, a British court heard how for two years social workers failed to detect the mummified body of a four-year-old starved to death by his mother, and it was claimed that the then Labour Health Secretary had covered up unnecessary deaths in an NHS hospital six months before the election.

In contrast, the phoney world of Twitter, the London chatterati and Left-wing media was gripped ten days ago by collective hysteria as it became obsessed round-the-clock by one story — a five-word headline on page 16 in the Daily Mail.

The screech of axe-grinding was deafening as the paper’s enemies gleefully leapt to settle scores.

Leading the charge, inevitably, was the Mail’s bête noire, the BBC. Fair-minded readers will decide themselves whether the hundreds of hours of airtime it devoted to that headline reveal a disturbing lack of journalistic proportionality and impartiality — but certainly the one-sided tone in their reporting allowed Labour to misrepresent Geoffrey Levy’s article on Ralph Miliband.

The genesis of that piece lay in Ed Miliband’s conference speech. The Mail was deeply concerned that in 2013, after all the failures of Socialism in the 20th century, the leader of the Labour Party was announcing its return, complete with land seizures and price fixing.

Surely, we reasoned, the public had the right to know what influence the Labour Leader’s Marxist father, to whom he constantly referred in his speeches, had on his thinking.

So it was that Levy’s article examined the views held by Miliband senior over his lifetime, not just as a 17-year-old youth as has been alleged by our critics.

The picture that emerged was of a man who gave unqualified support to Russian totalitarianism until the mid-Fifties, who loathed the market economy, was in favour of a workers’ revolution, denigrated British traditions and institutions, such as the Royal Family, the Church and the Army, and was overtly dismissive of Western democracy.

Levy’s article argued that the Marxism that inspired Ralph Miliband had provided the philosophical underpinning of one of history’s most appalling regimes — a regime, incidentally, that totally crushed freedom of expression.

Nowhere did the Mail suggest that Ralph Miliband was evil — only that the political beliefs he espoused had resulted in evil. As for the headline ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’, our point was simply this: Ralph Miliband was, as a Marxist, committed to smashing the institutions that make Britain distinctively British — and, with them, the liberties and democracy those institutions have fostered.

Yes, the Mail is happy to accept that in his personal life, Ralph Miliband was, as described by his son, a decent and kindly man — although we won’t withdraw our view that he supported an ideology that caused untold misery in the world.

Yes, we accept that he cherished this country’s traditions of tolerance and freedom — while, in a troubling paradox typical of the Left, detesting the very institutions and political system that made those traditions possible.

And yes, the headline was controversial — but popular newspapers have a long tradition of using provocative headlines to grab readers’ attention. In isolation, that headline may indeed seem over the top, but read in conjunction with the article we believed it was justifiable.

Despite this we acceded to Mr Miliband’s demand — and by golly, he did demand — that we publish his 1,000-word article defending his father.

So it was that, in a virtually unprecedented move, we published his words at the top of our Op Ed pages. They were accompanied by an abridged version of the original Levy article and a leader explaining why the Mail wasn’t apologising for the points it made.

The hysteria that followed is symptomatic of the post-Leveson age in which any newspaper which dares to take on the Left in the interests of its readers risks being howled down by the Twitter mob whom the BBC absurdly thinks represent the views of real Britain.

As the week progressed and the hysteria increased, it became clear that this was no longer a story about an article on Mr Miliband’s Marxist father but a full-scale war by the BBC and the Left against the paper that is their most vocal critic.

Orchestrating this bile was an ever more rabid Alastair Campbell. Again, fair-minded readers will wonder why a man who helped drive Dr David Kelly to his death, was behind the dodgy Iraq war dossier and has done more to poison the well of public discourse than anyone in Britain is given so much air-time by the BBC.

But the BBC’s bloodlust was certainly up. Impartiality flew out of the window. Ancient feuds were settled. Not to put too fine a point on things, we were right royally turned over.

Fair enough, if you dish it out, you take it. But my worry is that there was a more disturbing agenda to last week’s events.

Mr Miliband, of course, exults in being the man who destroyed Murdoch in this country. Is it fanciful to believe that his real purpose in triggering last week’s row — so assiduously supported by the liberal media which sneers at the popular press — was an attempt to neutralise Associated, the Mail’s publishers and one of Britain’s most robustly independent and successful newspaper groups.

Let it be said loud and clear that the Mail, unlike News International, did NOT hack people’s phones or pay the police for stories. I have sworn that on oath.

No, our crime is more heinous than that.

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-Left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life, and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite.

The metropolitan classes, of course, despise our readers with their dreams (mostly unfulfilled) of a decent education and health service they can trust, their belief in the family, patriotism, self-reliance, and their over-riding suspicion of the State and the People Who Know Best.

These people mock our readers’ scepticism over the European Union and a Human Rights Court that seems to care more about the criminal than the victim. They scoff at our readers who, while tolerant, fret that the country’s schools and hospitals can’t cope with mass immigration.

In other words, these people sneer at the decent working Britons — I’d argue they are the backbone of this country — they constantly profess to be concerned about.

The truth is that there is an unpleasant intellectual snobbery about the Mail in Leftish circles, for whom the word ‘suburban’ is an obscenity. They simply cannot comprehend how a paper that opposes the mindset they hold dear can be so successful and so loved by its millions of readers.

Well, I’m proud that the Mail stands up for those readers. I am proud that our Dignity For The Elderly Campaign has for years stood up for Britain’s most neglected community.

Proud that we have fought for justice for Stephen Lawrence, Gary McKinnon and the relatives of the victims of the Omagh bombing, for those who have seen loved ones suffer because of MRSA and the Liverpool Care Pathway.

I am proud we have led great popular campaigns for the NSPCC and the Alzheimer’s Society, on the dangers of paedophilia and the agonies of dementia. And I’m proud of our war against round-the-clock drinking, casinos, plastic bags, internet pornography and secret courts.

No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues.

I am proud that for years, while most of Fleet Street were in thrall to it, the Mail was the only paper to stand up to the malign propaganda machine of Tony Blair and his appalling henchman, Campbell. (And, my goodness, it’s been pay-back time over the past week!)

Could all these factors also be behind the Left’s tsunami of opprobrium against the Mail last week? I don’t know, but I do know that for a party mired in the corruption exposed by Damian McBride’s book (in which Ed Miliband was a central player) to call for a review of the Mail’s practices and culture is beyond satire.

Certainly, the Mail will not be silenced by a Labour Party that has covered up unnecessary, and often horrific, deaths in NHS hospitals, and suggests instead that it should start looking urgently at its own culture and practices.

Some have argued that last week’s brouhaha shows the need for statutory Press regulation. I would argue the opposite. The febrile heat, hatred, irrationality and prejudice provoked by last week’s row reveals why politicians must not be allowed anywhere near Press regulation.

And while the Mail does not agree with the Guardian over the stolen secret security files it published, I suggest that we can agree that the fury and recrimination the story is provoking reveals again why those who rule us — and who should be held to account by newspapers — cannot be allowed to sit in judgment on the Press.

That is why the Left should be very careful about what it wishes for — especially in the light of this week’s rejection by the politicians of the newspaper industry’s Charter for robust independent self-regulation.

The BBC is controlled, through the licence fee, by the politicians. ITV has to answer to Ofcom, a Government quango.

Newspapers are the only mass media left in Britain free from the control of the State.

The Mail has recognised the hurt Mr Miliband felt over our attack on his father’s beliefs.

We were happy to give him considerable space to describe how his father had fought for Britain (though a man who so smoothly diddled his brother risks laying himself open to charges of cynicism if he makes too much of a fanfare over familial loyalties).

For the record, the Mail received a mere two letters of complaint before Mr Miliband’s intervention and only a few hundred letters and emails since — many in support. A weekend demonstration against the paper attracted just 110 people.

It seems that in the real world, people — most of all our readers — were far more supportive of us than the chatterati would have you believe.

P.S. This week, the head of MI5 — subsequently backed by the PM, the Deputy PM, the Home Secretary and Labour’s elder statesman Jack Straw — effectively accused the Guardian of aiding terrorism by publishing stolen secret security files.

The story — which is of huge significance — was given scant coverage by a BBC which only a week ago had devoted days of wall-to-wall pejorative coverage to the Mail.

Again, I ask fair readers, what is worse: to criticise the views of a Marxist thinker, whose ideology is anathema to most and who had huge influence on the man who could one day control our security forces . . . or to put British lives at risk by helping terrorists?

[Teddy Bear]

It's good when the national media recognise the tactics that we here observe consistently employed by the BBC. One only wonders when the government will actually do something about it instead of complaining.

What do they think they're there for?

It's still all too obvious which side the BBC is on as corporation ignores critics of security leaks

• BBC website led yesterday with a claim by Vince Cable that the Guardian had done a 'considerable public service' by publishing secret material
  
• Story initially buried Jack Straw's damaging attack on the paper
  
• Straw's powerful intervention was not mentioned on Six O'Clock News

By Jack Doyle

The BBC was accused last night of siding with the Guardian in its coverage of criticism of the newspaper’s release of top-secret documents.

The corporation’s website led yesterday afternoon with a claim from Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable that by publishing the material the Guardian had done a ‘considerable public service’.

The headline echoed wording used on the newspaper’s live blog. That read: ‘NSA files – Guardian has done “considerable public service”, says Vince Cable.’

The BBC story also initially buried former Home Secretary Jack Straw’s damaging attack on the Guardian over the secret documents.

Mr Straw had made the comments to a BBC outlet and they appeared to have emerged after Mr Cable had spoken on the flagship BBC Radio 4 Today programme yesterday at 8.10am.

The Labour grandee’s powerful intervention was not mentioned at all on last night’s Six O’Clock News.

Their story instead led on David Cameron being ‘ready to listen’ on the issue of improving political oversight of security services, while ruling out a review.

On Thursday, the Today programme failed to ask Home Secretary Theresa May about the Guardian row when she was interviewed in the same slot. Later in the day she was asked about it in separate BBC interviews and said the revelations had given ‘some comfort to terrorists’.

Robert Halfon, the Tory MP for Harlow, said: ‘It’s incredibly sad that our national broadcaster has seemingly chosen to side with the Guardian and impose a news blackout on an alleged major threat to our national security by a national newspaper.’

All week commentators have lambasted the BBC for its failure to give the story due prominence.


Vince Cable appeared top on the BBC website yesterday afternoon

On Tuesday, when the story broke, the main news at 10pm led with MI5 director general Andrew Parker’s speech but made no mention of the key claim that the left-wing newspaper’s publication of GCHQ secrets had done ‘enormous damage’.

This prompted MPs to claim BBC journalists were ‘protecting their Left-wing friends’.

The following morning, bulletins on BBC Radio 4 failed to mention the newspaper at all although it was mention in later reports.

The BBC did not change its online coverage of the story on Wednesday to reflect criticism of the Guardian until the newspaper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, publicly defended its actions.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘We completely reject any suggestion that our reporting has been biased.

‘From the outset we have given this story a high profile and robustly questioned all the protagonists involved, representing a range of views as they have emerged including the new angles today, which were the comments from Vince Cable and Jack Straw.’

[Teddy Bear]

In the following article, Janet Daley takes an overview of recent issues in light of the possibility of further press regulation, and the BBC's constant insidious agenda.

The BBC foists on us a skewed version of reality

The news media are engaged in a political argument about whether the purpose of journalism is to report the world as it is or to purvey an idealised view

By Janet Daley

You have probably noticed that we are engaged in a fight to the death over the future of the free press in Britain. But you may be under the mistaken impression that this is a war between politicians determined to protect their own behaviour from scrutiny, and journalists who want to run riot through any area of public or private life they choose.

It may seem that this ruckus has very little to do with you, but if that is what you think, then you are missing what is really going on, and losing your opportunity to contribute to a much larger debate about the nature and purpose of news coverage – which I assume you do care about since you are reading the comment pages of a serious newspaper.

First, let’s be clear about who the antagonists are in this furore. While it is true that all three party leaders have come down in favour of the sort of statutory regulation of the press that (most, but not all) newspapers reject, this does not mean that all MPs – let alone all politicians – agree with them.

A good many dissident voices on both sides of the party divide have spoken out against such a move which, they say, would be anathema to the concept of a press free from political control that has prevailed in this country for more than 300 years.

And on the other side, not all sections of the news media are opposed to the idea of a press super-regulator under government auspices. In fact, the BBC, which is the largest and most influential provider of news in this country, has made little attempt to disguise its support for the taming of what it regards as the vulgar British newspaper trade. (At the same time, the corporation is under threat of external regulation itself: there is considerable pressure to bring it under the auspices of Ofcom like any other broadcasting organisation. Interestingly, the BBC regards the idea that its practices and views might be questioned by an outside body as outrageous.)

Among the newspapers themselves, neither The Guardian nor The Independent have joined with other major newspaper groups in their campaign against a Royal Charter overseeing the press. The Guardian has, in fact, been a critic of other newspapers’ behaviour and appeared to welcome its restraint (while paradoxically defying any attempt to limit its right to publish secret security information).
It’s all very confusing. This is at least as much a battle between sections of the news media – indeed, between differing views of what news is for – as it is between journalism and government power. The BBC/Guardian axis and the Right-of-centre newspaper camp are tearing lumps out of one another on matters that must seem bizarre to the folks at home. This press-on-press violence can only be understood in a much larger context.

Why in heaven’s name did the BBC – as this newspaper made clear last week, and which our readers’ letters reiterate today – devote such an absurd amount of airtime to the Daily Mail’s crass story about Ed Miliband’s father? Did it really think this event was so earthshaking – tabloid paper publishes tasteless article – that it rated the top slot on its news broadcasts for days running?

And then, why has the Daily Mail been attacking The Guardian’s Edward Snowden espionage story with such vehemence, long after its first appearance, even implicitly accusing The Guardian’s editors of conspiring with those who wish to harm Britain?

If you subscribe to the simple view of the free press farrago – that it is journalism vs the governing class – then you must ask yourself, what is going on here?

Those who should be allies in a critical battle for survival are actually at each others’ throats, apparently as anxious to discredit one another as they are to fight the forces of oppression that would shut them down.

So this is where the bigger question comes in: what is the dissemination of news for? For the BBC – by which I mean, for those who decide these things at the corporation – there is little doubt that the function of news broadcasting is to enlighten the public. I use that word advisedly, in its specialised sense, meaning not simply to inform but to “free from prejudice and superstition”.

BBC news output is specifically designed to counter what it sees as ignorance and popular prejudices. Its coverage of issues in which it believes such prejudices to be rife – immigration, for example – is intended to be instructional and, specifically corrective of what its managers think of, and describe openly in conversation, as the influence of the “Right-wing press”.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the loathing that the BBC feels for the Daily Mail – and its readers. I once remarked at a corporation seminar on the visceral contempt that I had heard BBC news personnel express for “Right-wing” papers, the Mail and the Sun in particular: had it occurred to them, I asked, to compare the relative circulations of the papers which they despised, with the ones they embraced (ie The Guardian, The Independent, etc) and to ask themselves what proportion of the licence-fee payers they were serving?

But, of course, that was missing the point. The BBC approach to news is aimed precisely at those people who read the papers that are hated by its staff. It is intended to offer an alternative vision of reality in which immigration is not a threat to anyone, patriotism is a joke, religious belief (as opposed to ethnic identity) is not taken seriously, conflicting cultural values never create social problems and government spending is inherently virtuous.

The unabashed dissemination of this highly political official viewpoint is justified on the grounds that it is needed to balance the influence of scurrilous newspapers. One might ask, of course, what would happen if the “Right-wing press” really was extinguished: would the BBC then feel it could drop its social engineering function?

Under the most serious peace-time threat to open and uncensored expression in centuries, the news media are plunged into a bloody bout of gratuitous self-harm. But what they are actually engaged in is a political argument about whether the purpose of journalism is to report the world as it is and to reflect the perceptions of people as they are – even if the results are sometimes ugly or unfair – or to purvey an idealised view of what life might be like if everyone felt and behaved differently.

A large portion of the world was subjected for several generations to news media that tried to coerce its populations into seeing the world as ideologues believed it should be: it didn’t work out.
Britain, on the other hand, has had an irreverent, cynical and sometimes cruel tradition of social comment for a very long time. And we are still here.

[Teddy Bear]

By the very definition, Snowden ia a traitor.
If you work for an intelligence agency for a nation, and are privy to confidential information, it is not your job to decide what should be made public while carrying out your role. We rely on out intelligence services to protect us from threats, real and potential, and to make public just what the intelligence service is using to identify those threats is to play into the hand of our enemies.

Yet the self-important Snowden, along with the similarly arrogant Guardian and BBC feel they know what's best for this country, and have the affront to promote this traitorous behaviour, which in my book makes them accessories.

Snowden has fled to Russia, claiming he won't get a fair trial in the US. Don't know what he imagines a fair trial to mean for which he won't be found guilty, which is probably why he wants to think of it as unfair.
That the Guardian and BBC would promote him as a hero shows just which side of this country they are on, yet the government still shows no sign of curtailing the BBC.

Let's also bear in mind that the BBC spend £100,000s of licence fee payers money concealing information from FOI requests, such as revealing the Balen report about their bias concerning Israel, for what they deem is journalistic purposes. Nothing to do with national security.
Even in this article posted today we have this: The BBC refused to disclose details of any costs of taxis and chauffeur-driven cars on journeys between London and Manchester requested via the Freedom of Information Act



The inmates are running the asylum.

A good article by Edward Lucas in the Telegraph.

Edward Snowden: Did the American whistleblower act alone?
A new book looks at the damage the fugitive American whistleblower and his Snowdenistas are doing to Western interests

Edward Snowden is, in the eyes of many, a secular saint. The fugitive NSA contractor has sacrificed his career and risked his freedom to expose systematic wrongdoing by Western intelligence agencies: America and Britain spy on other Western countries; they hoover up and store vast quantities of information about domestic emails and phone calls; they use secret court orders to force cooperation, and they can bug almost any international communication.
After his daring heist of secrets from America’s National Security Agency, the 30-year-old has fled to a secret hiding place where he awaits deserved vindication. It is the stuff of spy movies – played out in real life.

I disagree. My new book, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster, depicts him as at best a “useful idiot”, whose actions serve our enemies. The theft and publication of secret documents is not a heroic campaign but reckless self-indulgence with disastrous consequences.
For all the media hype in The Guardian, the BBC and elsewhere, Snowden’s published material does not prove systematic, sinister wrongdoing or abuse by the NSA or its British counterpart, GCHQ.

The typical revelation consists of Powerpoint slides showing how the agency bugs, snoops, and searches the vast warehouses of information it collects. But the revelations come devoid of context. Much is ambiguous and out-of-date. The story is told without elementary editorial scrutiny or fact-checking.

The Snowdenistas – as I call his supporters – use this largely underwhelming material as proof of systematic abuse by out-of-control spy services. Did anyone really think that the hackers and code-crackers in Cheltenham (home to GCHQ) or in Fort Meade, Maryland (headquarters of the NSA) spent all day playing Sudoku? Their capabilities are indeed colossal. So they should be, given the taxpayers’ money they consume.
Spy agencies engage in espionage, an inherently disreputable trade: it involves stealing secrets. When details leak, they look shocking. But the hypocrisy of the Snowdenistas is as jarring as their naivety.

Our enemies – notably Russia and China – are spying on us. So too are our allies. France runs a mighty industrial espionage service for the benefit of its big companies. Germany has an excellent signals intelligence agency, the Kommando Strategische Aufklärung. Germany’s spies were recently caught spying on their Nato ally, Estonia, using an official who was also spying for the Russians.

Far from denigrating American intelligence, we should applaud it. It helps catch terrorists, gangsters and spies. Moreover, its oversight and scrutiny is the toughest in the world. America has taken the most elusive and lawless part of government and crammed it into a system of legislative and judicial control.
America is also part of the world’s only successful no-spy agreement, with its close allies – notably Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A list of countries that would trust Germany or France not to spy on them would be rather shorter.

Snowden’s published revelations include material that has nothing to do with his purported worries about personal privacy. They reveal how countries like Norway and Sweden spy on Russia. Why is it in the public interest to reveal how democracies spy on dictatorships? The Snowdenistas’ outrage is based on the fact that this spying takes place in cooperation with the NSA, the fount of all evil.

Other disclosures are similarly hard to justify. Why is it in the public interest to reveal how the NSA intercepts emails, phone calls and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan, or to show that the agency is scrutinising the security of that country’s nuclear weapons? Snowden even revealed details of the NSA hacking computers and mobile phones in China and Hong Kong. The result is to cast a distorting and damaging light on agencies’ work. The harm is catastrophic.
In the spy world, the damage-control involved when even a handful of secret documents is leaked is colossal. When the breach involves tens of thousands, it is paralysing.

Our agencies have to assume that the material is either already in Moscow and Beijing, or will get there eventually. Many operations must be shut down or started anew: a serious spy service does not put lives at risk on the assumption that the other side will not exploit our blunders.

It is fatuous for Snowden’s allies to say that they are keeping the stolen material safe: they lack the knowledge and skills to do so. With equal fatuity, they assert that they redacted the published material in order not to breach security. How can they know what will be damaging or harmless?

As I argue in the book, the damage done by Snowden’s revelations neatly and suspiciously fits the interests of one country: Russia. As the dissident journalist Masha Gessen has observed: “The Russian propaganda machine has not gotten this much mileage out of a US citizen since Angela Davis’s murder trial in 1971.”
The sensationalist, misleading interpretation of the stolen documents has weakened America’s relations with Europe and other allies; it has harmed security relationships between those allies, particularly in Europe; it has corroded public trust in Western security and intelligence services; it has undermined the West’s standing in the eyes of the world; and it has paralysed our intelligence agencies.

These shifts will change our world for the worse. The Atlantic Alliance was already in a parlous state before the Snowden revelations. Now anti-Americanism in Germany and other European countries is ablaze.

Yet an accelerated American withdrawal from Europe would benefit only Russia. The Russian-Chinese campaign to wrest control of the internet from its American founding fathers, and hand it over to national governments (meaning more censorship and control) has gained momentum.
Western protestations of concern for online freedom and privacy ring hollow. The reputation of the biggest Western internet and technology firms has taken a pounding for their supposed complicity in espionage. Their rivals in Russia and China and elsewhere are gleeful. The Snowdenistas seem oblivious to the idea that we in the West have enemies and competitors.

Instead, the great grievance of the Snowden camp is what they see as the arbitrary power of the NSA and GCHQ. Who gave these agencies the power to bug and snoop? The real answer to that is simple: the elected governments and leaders of those countries, the judges and lawmakers charged with supervising the intelligence services, and the directors of those agencies in the exercise of their lawful powers.
The question deserves to be posed in the other direction. What gives the Snowdenistas and their media allies the right to leak our most closely guarded and expensive secrets?

To be fair, the recklessness, narcissism, and self-righteousness of the Snowden camp do not invalidate all their aims. A debate on the collection and warehousing of meta-data (details, for example, about the location, duration, direction of a phone call, but not its content) was overdue. Collected and scrutinised, meta-data can breach privacy: if you know who called a suicide-prevention helpline, from where and when, the content matters less than the circumstances.
The revelations have also shown that intelligence agencies make mistakes, that they operate up to the limits of their political, judicial and regulatory constraints, and that they sometimes clash with lawmakers and judges. Perhaps the most troubling disclosure (so far unproven) is that the NSA deliberately weakened the hardware and software sold by American companies in order to secretly exploit those vulnerabilities.

But none of this remotely justifies the damage caused. Even Snowden himself justified his leaks not by alleging that we live in a world akin to Orwell’s 1984, but because he fears we are heading that way.

Indeed, Snowden seems to have conducted his activities within the NSA to be as devastating as possible. He stole far more documents than he needed to support his case, and did so in an exceptionally harmful way, making it hard for his victims to work out which systems were breached.

The most controversial issue is whether Snowden acted alone. I am stunned that some journalists and commentators who are so extraordinarily paranoid about the actions of their own governments are so trusting when it comes to the aims and capabilities of the government of Russia – the country where Snowden arrived in such curious circumstances, and lives in such secrecy. (Scanty clues suggest that he is in or near the Russian foreign intelligence headquarters in Yasenevo in southern Moscow.)

I am not arguing that Snowden or his allies are Russian agents. But history gives plenty of examples of indirect Kremlin involvement in political movements which were damaging to Western interests.

Like the anti-nuclear movement of the early Eighties, modern campaigners for privacy and digital freedom see their own countries’ flaws with blinding clarity, and ignore those of repressive regimes elsewhere. Their mistrust means that little said by governments carries any weight.
But the Snowdenistas go far beyond the anti-nuclear campaigners in their thirst for damage. Disagreeing with your government’s actions is one thing. Sabotaging them is another.

The Snowden affair is a story of secrecy and deception – but not on the side of the intelligence agencies. Far too little attention has been paid to the political agendas of the most ardent Snowdenistas – people such as the bombastic Brazil-based blogger, Glenn Greenwald, hysterical “hacktivist” Jacob Appelbaum, and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

They cloak their extreme and muddled beliefs in the language of privacy rights, civil liberties and digital freedoms. But where they part company with most of their fellow citizens is that they appear not to support the right of an elected, law-abiding government to keep and defend its secrets. They could found a political party based on such ideas. But it would get nowhere. They are bringing about the greatest peacetime defeat in the history of the West. That is not a noble crusade. It is sabotage and treason.