{"id":5663,"date":"2022-06-30T23:58:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T21:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5663"},"modified":"2022-06-30T23:58:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T21:58:26","slug":"spooks-establishment-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2022-06-30\/spooks-establishment-media\/","title":{"rendered":"How spooks and the establishment media are circling the wagons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second of this two-part series examines why so many journalists are keen to cooperate with \u2013 and parrot the key messages of \u2013 the intelligence agencies<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mint Press – 29 July 2022<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Russia <\/span>banned<\/span><\/a> 29 British journalists, including several from the BBC and t<\/span>he Guardian<\/span>, on the grounds that they were \u201cassociated with the defense complex\u201d. That claim was not, at least in all cases, quite as preposterous as was widely assumed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>part one<\/span><\/a> of this two-part series, we saw how the <\/span>Guardian<\/span>\u2019s Luke Harding \u2013 one of the journalists banned by Russia \u2013 has promoted entirely unsubstantiated smear stories that have hewn closely to the agenda of Western intelligence services. Harding even wrote a prominent Russiagate book and could not defend its basic claims when <\/span>challenged<\/span><\/a> by independent journalist Aaron Mat\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Russia\u2019s ban provoked a predictable, self-righteous backlash from the UK media \u2013 and was adduced as further evidence of Russian president Vladimir Putin\u2019s authoritarian tendencies \u2013 Moscow was, in fact, mirroring earlier bans by the <\/span>British authorities<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>European Union<\/span><\/a> on Russian state-sponsored media. None of the British journalists now barred from Russia raised their voices in protest at the banning of the English-language broadcasts and the websites of RT and Sputnik.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In popular imagination, cultivated jointly by Western establishment media and Western intelligence agencies, both outlets are staffed by Russian spooks strong-arming a few impressionable Westerners with Stalinist tendencies. The reality is very different. RT wants to have influence in the West, and the only way to achieve that is by recruiting credible Western journalists who have trenchant criticisms of the Western national-security state and its war industries but cannot \u2013 for that very reason \u2013 find a platform in the establishment media at home. <\/span><\/p>\n

RT might not be the best place to get a neutral view of what Russia is up to, but it had attracted a growing audience in the West by providing an outlet for disillusioned Western journalists who are ready to paint a realistic picture of the failings of their own states.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of RT\u2019s journalists, for example, was Chris Hedges, a former foreign correspondent for <\/span>The New York Times<\/span>. He has had a long and distinguished journalistic career and won major journalism awards. Nonetheless, six years of his Emmy-nominated On Contact programme for RT America \u2013 interviewing major public figures \u2013 was <\/span>erased<\/span><\/a> from Youtube\u2019s channel overnight.<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>part one<\/span><\/a>, we considered the cases of two celebrated British journalists, Paul Mason and Carole Cadwalladr, who were revealed to be covertly colluding with Western intelligence services. Not only that, but they had used those contacts to try to harm other journalists who have been taking on the British and US security states. They had been effectively recruited \u2013 or in Mason\u2019s case, possibly recruited himself \u2013 to a covert, and dirty, information war. <\/span><\/p>\n

The paradox is that, while Cadwalladr and Mason have been accusing \u2013 without evidence \u2013 journalists in the West of colluding with foreign intelligence agencies, they themselves have been colluding with their own intelligence services to smear other reporters. If Russian intelligence needs a troll farm to spread disinformation, Western intelligence can rely, it seems, on compliant celebrity journalists in British mainstream outlets to do the same work.<\/span><\/p>\n

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My latest: The cases of Paul Mason and Carol Cadwalladr reveal how readily celebrated media figures are recruited to the intelligence services\u2019 covert information war against other journalists https:\/\/t.co\/XkyTnSyjfB<\/a><\/p>\n

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) June 21, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n