[HN Gopher] Murray's jailing is latest move in a battle to snuff...
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Murray's jailing is latest move in a battle to snuff out
independent journalism
Author : k1m
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-07-31 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jonathan-cook.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jonathan-cook.net)
| gpcr1949 wrote:
| I've enjoyed some of Murray's writing, in particular he did some
| quite good court reporting related to Assange. I have also been
| intrigued by his non-orthodox interpretations of that chemical
| weapons incident in Salisbury, though some might call these
| pieces outrageous conspiracy writing. I did not really follow the
| stuff around Salmond so I can't comment on what happened there.
| In any case, it seems a bit severe to me to jail this guy for
| hinting at information that major press apparently also made easy
| to find. At least, this is what is claimed. He is quite old and
| apparently his health isn't the best either, so I would have
| expected something like house arrest or a suspended sentence at
| worst.
| Joeboy wrote:
| > Murray is also the first person to be jailed in Britain for
| contempt of court in half a century
|
| That is not true.
| new_realist wrote:
| Looks like Murray was in contempt of court for doxxing female
| witnesses in a sexual assault trial, in defiance of a judge's
| order.
| k1m wrote:
| Jigsaw identification isn't same as doxxing. The issue here is
| the double standards, as Jonathan Cook points out:
|
| > In finding Murray guilty of so-called "jigsaw
| identification", Lady Dorrian did not make a distinction
| between what Murray wrote about the Salmond case and what
| approved, corporate journalists wrote.
|
| > That is for good reason. Two surveys have shown that most of
| those following the Salmond trial who believe they identified
| one or more of his accusers did so from the coverage of the
| corporate media, especially the BBC. Murray's writings appear
| to have had very little impact on the identification of any of
| the accusers. Among named individual journalists, Dani
| Garavelli, who wrote about the trial for Scotland on Sunday and
| the London Review of Books, was cited 15 times more often by
| respondents than Murray as helping them to identify Salmond's
| accusers.
|
| > Rather, Lady Dorrian's distinction was between who gets
| protected when identification occurs. Write for the Times or
| the Guardian, or broadcast on the BBC, where the audience reach
| is enormous, and the courts will protect you from prosecution.
| Write about the same issues for a blog, and you risk being
| hounded into prison.
| new_realist wrote:
| Please, apply some critical thinking and stop regurgitating
| this propaganda. If a judge tells you to stop doing
| something, you stop doing it, especially after being warned
| multiple times. Whether your reporting ended up being the
| critical missing piece is irrelevant.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > If a judge tells you to stop doing something, you stop
| doing
|
| Even if they have no legal right to?
| pmyteh wrote:
| But they do. In Scotland (and the rest of the UK) judges
| can bar publication of a wide range of material about a
| court case, in advance or retrospectively, and enforce it
| by order. That order has penal consequences if broken.
|
| If you don't think the order is within the legal bounds
| of the power, you can appeal it. (News organisations do
| this semi-regularly). What you shouldn't do is breach it
| and hope to get off at the contempt hearing.
| seanhunter wrote:
| The ruling that has been linked in another comment and if
| you read that you can see that in this case neither side
| disputed the lawful nature of the restrictive order. In
| other words noone involved claimed the judge didn't have
| the legal right to tell Murray not to allow
| identification of the complainers.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| This post was a response to a maxim (a generalization),
| not this case.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Judge can do anything they want, regardless of laws or
| sanity. Judge orders you to wear a purple hat, you wear a
| purple hat.
|
| You can seek relief from other judges if you don't like
| it. Anything else and you go to jail.
|
| My experience doing tech support for them when I was
| young is that they are the most arrogant people
| imaginable.
| ianpurton wrote:
| My understanding is that they were doxxed by piecing together
| multiple news stories. I guess journalists each giving away
| pieces to the puzzle.
|
| Looks like Murray has been categorized as not a journalist and
| gets a prison sentence.
| Traster wrote:
| From the court's ruling
|
| > specified the job held by her at the time in question. The
| specificity is such that to specify her as holding it when
| she did, and in the context which is given, is tantamount to
| naming her. This is a clear breach of the order.
|
| It's like saying I haven't named told you I slept with Boris
| Johnson, but I _have_ told you I 've slept with the Prime
| Minister. It's what a stupid person would think is a way of
| skirting a court order not to name someone.
| orra wrote:
| > My understanding is that they were doxxed by piecing
| together multiple news stories.
|
| Murray deliberately published information to doxx the sexual
| assault complainers. He doubled down after being warned
| multiple times he has breaching the court order
|
| > Looks like Murray has been categorized as not a journalist
|
| Whether Murray is a journalist or not is entirely irrelevant.
| The court order Murray broke applies to everybody.
| k1m wrote:
| > The court order Murray broke applies to everybody.
|
| It clearly doesn't as two surveys showed those who claim
| they were able to identify individuals from the reporting
| of the case, said they were able to do so from reports from
| the BBC and other corporate media. None of those reporters
| are facing jail.
|
| Again, what Jonathan Cook is pointing out is exactly the
| opposite of what you claim. The court order does not apply
| to everybody: "Murray's writings appear to have had very
| little impact on the identification of any of the accusers.
| Among named individual journalists, Dani Garavelli, who
| wrote about the trial for Scotland on Sunday and the London
| Review of Books, was cited 15 times more often by
| respondents than Murray as helping them to identify
| Salmond's accusers."
| new_realist wrote:
| Of course these other journalists were named more often
| in surveys: they have a much broader reach. Name
| recognition is not the issue; ethical standards are.
| k1m wrote:
| Craig Murray is being jailed because he allegedly helped
| reveal the identities of individuals through his
| reporting. There's nothing indicating his reporting
| revealed any more information about those identities than
| reporters from the BBC and other outlets. In fact,
| surveys show those other reporters did far more to help
| people identify those individuals.
|
| But they're not being jailed. Craig Murray has been
| singled out. Nothing ethical about that.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Edit: yeah he was warned by the court multiple times. He
| should have edited his pieces.
|
| Original comment: Wait, when was he warned?
| twic wrote:
| > Murray deliberately published information to doxx the
| sexual assault complainers.
|
| That's a strong claim that i haven't seen before. Why do
| you believe it was deliberate?
|
| > The court order Murray broke applies to everybody.
|
| What is your explanation for why the order has not been
| applied to any other journalists, when we know that other
| journalists contributed much more more to people learning
| the identities of the complainants?
| orra wrote:
| > Why do you believe it was deliberate?
|
| "The courts warned him to take his blog down or face the
| consequences of identifying the women but he refused."
|
| https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/called-scots-
| act...
|
| > What is your explanation for why the order has not been
| applied to any other journalists
|
| Actually, no, that's untrue. IIRC, the Spectator was
| warned or investigated for some material it published.
| pricechild wrote:
| Two of Murray's claims in his defence were:
|
| https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/01/my-trial-
| and...
|
| > 5. The court order protecting identities did not come
| into being before 10 March 2020. Most of the Crown's
| alleged examples are before this date. We absolutely deny
| my articles enable jigsaw identification, but even if they
| did they were not illegal at the time of publication.
|
| together with:
|
| > 6. Up until 10 March 2020, had I wished to publish
| identities I could have done so quite legally in the
| articles before that date which the Lord Advocate cites.
| Unlike England, there is no law in Scotland barring
| publication of witness identity absent a specific court
| order. The fact I did not do so in the year between my
| learning identities and the ban coming into force, in
| several articles on the case where I could legally have
| published the identities, make nonsense the Lord Advocate's
| contention that I deliberately gave clues.
|
| Much has been made of point 6, and I can understand not
| being convinced by it.
|
| But is there not truth to point 5? I guess not, since he
| was found guilty. I'd be interested in reading why this was
| discounted.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Online publication is deemed 'continuous' as long as the
| material is up. 'It's an old article' isn't a defence if
| you're on notice that it needs to be taken down.
|
| Incidentally, the robots.txt file for one of Britain's
| less reputable papers (IIRC The Sun) used to have a
| specific list of story URLs not to crawl which I suspect
| were those they'd been ordered to take down after libel
| actions etc.
| 4t3gar wrote:
| Why not throw some covid into this thoughtful discussion?
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
|
| COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID
| Traster wrote:
| I'd recommend people actually look at the ruling, becuase it goes
| straight against some of the talking points from Murray and his
| friends, and in some cases is pretty funny.[1] For example on
| page 17, the judge concludes that Murray didn't breach the rules
| about reporting on a jurors dismissal because what Murray wrote
| was "bizarre" and "unfounded". Ie, he completely lied about it
| and that actually meant he didn't breach the law. It also notes
| that not only did his articles reveal the accusers details, but
| the commenters on his articles literally named the accusers.
|
| He also literally states in his own testimony to the court that
| he intended to attempt to reveal the identities without being in
| contempt of court.
|
| The whole thing is just pretty funny - he's basically saying "Oh
| well I didn't say their names" and the court is saying "Yeah
| that's not the standard of the court order, you made it easy to
| identify them". I mean honestly, he literally told people what on
| the accusers job was, and when she did that job, meaning that
| there was only 1 possible person he could've been talking about.
|
| [1]https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-
| genera...
| k1m wrote:
| What you don't get by reading this ruling is the full context
| given by Jonathan Cook and the double standards he highlights.
|
| > The whole thing is just pretty funny
|
| Glad you can laught it off. Meanwhile, Reporters Without
| Borders have expressed grave concerns: "Craig Murray's prison
| sentence on charges related to his blogging is disproportionate
| and highly concerning. RSF emphasises that journalistic
| activity should not lead to prison sentences anywhere;
| imprisonment in connection with any journalistic activity
| should only ever be a measure of absolute last resort - if at
| all. It is certainly not what we would expect in a country
| committed to protecting media freedom and the safety of
| journalists." - https://rsf.org/en/news/uk-blogger-craig-
| murray-jailed-eight...
| Traster wrote:
| You don't think it's funny that he escaped legal liability
| because the court came to the conclusion that what he wrote
| was so mis-representative that it couldn't be considered an
| actual breach? I personally thinks that both funny, and
| indicative that the judge is being balanced, rather than
| disproportionate.
|
| As for Jonathon Cook - the double standard he claims doesn't
| exist in the judgement.
| k1m wrote:
| He's being jailed for 8 months for his writing. Hardly
| escaping legal liability. I don't find that funny, no.
|
| As for Jonathan Cook's piece, the double standard he writes
| about is the fact that those who claim they learned of the
| identities of the individuals claim they did so not from
| Craig Murray's writing but from other reporters. That's
| been completely ignored by this ruling. Do you think we'll
| see a court case targeting BBC reporters or the writer Dani
| Garavelli, cited by most respondants as the main source?
| Isn't it a double standard if they escape jail but Murray
| doesn't? Certainly looks to me like someone's got an axe to
| grind when they fixate on the ways Murray may have let
| readers learn about identities but gives other reporters a
| pass - especially when public surveys reveal those other
| reporters to be even more culpable than Murray.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Who's up for prison next? Jonathan Cook perhaps?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| A subtle point that might be missed is that Murray's reports of
| the Alex Salmond trial and Salmond's innocence lend weight to the
| theory that Salmond's accusers may have been part of a
| coordinated political attack. The big government machine is
| striking back.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I am 100% in the camp that someone should have resigned but to
| say that there was a "coordinated political attack" makes no
| sense.
|
| Salmond had already made himself totally irrelevant. He was
| lobbing grenades from the sidelines through Cherry and McAskill
| but he wasn't very effective (Salmond had electoral success but
| was personally never popular, with women in particular).
|
| And all this ignores the fact that the person who put Salmond
| in jeopardy was Salmond by acting like a massive creep.
|
| What happened in the case was largely a function of total
| incompetence by the Scottish Civil Service/govt. If you are
| familiar with Scotland, that is standard. Several people from
| the Civil Service should have resigned, they didn't. Sturgeon's
| testimony was obviously inconsistent at several points. This
| isn't the same thing as a "political attack" (again, be totally
| clear, Salmond has no political role...he isn't a politician,
| he is someone who used to be a politician).
|
| Also, there is no "big government machine" in Scotland, and it
| most certainly does not control the courts if it did exists.
| That just isn't how the law works in Scotland or the UK (if you
| needed evidence of this, both govts have had run ins with the
| courts...if this was true then why was Salmond found innocent).
| new_realist wrote:
| If someone is found innocent at trial, it is therefore a
| coordinated political attack? That's a stretch.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If someone is found innocent at trial, it is therefore a
| coordinated political attack?
|
| You surely didn't read that claim or any related claim in the
| comment you're replying to.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Depends if months of bad press and accusations damaged his
| political standing.
|
| I don't like Salmon, but a smear is a smear even if no one
| goes to prison...
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(page generated 2021-07-31 23:02 UTC)