The BBC and the mainstream media are not reporting it but today the Information Commissioner gave testimony to the House of Commons DCMS Select Committee which demonstrates the true degradation of British Journalism. This reminds me of a talk last Autumn at, my alma mater, Hertford College Oxford.
In parliament, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham was asked if her body had felt “used as a means to bring about a political objective, as in the undermining of a democratic decision.” This is with reference to the Cambridge Analytica allegations of interference in the Brexit poll which won fantasist Carole Cadwalladr an Orwell prize. You will remember that the Commission has already shown that this was a total fantasy. Cadwalladr won a prize, which she has still not returned, for publishing pure fiction. The chairman of the committee Julian Knight stated
“There was a degree of confirmation bias about much of the reporting around this, we had much lauded prize winning journalists coming out with quite bizarre conspiracy theories, diagrams and that sort of thing. We had disjointed Netflix films, we had witnesses who claimed to be whistleblowers but who were actually in the market for selling information in the same way as Cambridge Analytica was being accused of.”
Denham responded that her enquiry may have been “coloured by others” but said that the IC “ tried our best” to look past the colourful characters in the story.
This is another damning day for Cadwalladr whose antics and untruths right back to her bogus claims of having a deprived education, I have exposed for many years on this site. But while any reasonable person can now see her exposed as a fantasist who may soon be bankrupted as a result of her libelling of Arron Banks, some still see her as a hero. Former Guardian hack Will Hutton writes in his valedictory message as Principal of Hertford college Oxford.
“It was a rich year for Hertford Conversations. In the Autumn we held three lectures on the Brexit-engendered Constitutional Crisis. Alan Rusbridger and Carole Cadwalladr spelled out the degradation of British journalism.”
Truly folks like Hutton live in another world, thinking that a proven fantasist who herself is now exposed as one of those whose constant output of fake news has done so much to damage the standing of British journalism, is in any position to lecture us on this topic.
What is Hertford, a place that thinks that the daughter and granddaughter of Lords is the right person to lecture us on how folks really can maker it big despite the discrimination they suffer, offering next term? The late Jeffrey Epstein in conversation on childcare? Mr Piers Morgan on humility in public life?
Oxford is still, it seems, the City of lost causes.