The Independent on Sunday has named me as one of its Top Ten Alternative National Treasures. There I am, after Charlotte Church, Vivienne Westwood and Jo Brand.
I differ from the others in having no discernible talent, but also in not having appeared on broadcast media for two years now. I continue to receive invitations to appear, and then have them withdrawn almost immediately thereafter. The last was from Channel 4 News a couple of weeks ago. It is 18 months ago since I catalogued how it works here.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/11/blacklisted.html
It must have happened over twenty times since. It appears again and again that an editor has the idea to invite me, but then it gets knocked on the head by some process.
I cannot help but put this together with the almost total news boycott of my evidence this week to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. That was really weird. Carried nowhere at all but the Today programme. Not a single mention in one newspaper.
On the other hand, to become an Alternative National Treasure armed with nothing but a keyboard…!
The bastard has a keyboard lads!!!
OK MR MURRAY, ASSUME THE POSITION; ANYTHING YOU SAY MAYBE TAKEN DOWN AND IGNORED AS EVIDENCE.
The Indie should host a party for all the Alternative National Treasures – it would be the event of the decade.
Don’t let it go to your head, Craig.
Most people would be cringing to be associated with those creeps!
If there’s not a blacklist there’s definitely a white list. Why are the same faces always appearing on question time etc.?
Ceedee
I am puzzled. I don’t immediately have anything againsy anyone on the list that I can think of. Not to call them a “creep”.
Ignore the cynics Craig, this is a perfectly good-natured accolade to top off what must be a rather satisfactory week.
“I differ from the others in having no discernible talent”
Having read your site regularly for three months now my only observation was that all the others are considerably richer than you.
Have you seen Martin Ritt’s brilliant film “The Front” starring Woody Allen and made by a number of formerly blacklisted Americans (Zero Mostel, among them)? Following the pattern of the film, here’s how the blacklist would operate: all interviews of well-known persons on TV or radio have to be cleared with the government, because of a secret order. Once it is known that Craig Murray is slated to give an interview, a government minister (or official) instructs a broadcaster about its unacceptability. The broadcaster orders the programme maker to cancel an appearance and make up an excuse to do so. The order is carried out.
The question is, how to expose the process and bring the individuals responsible to justice. There’s a good one for an aspiring investigative journalist! One starting point might be to persuade people who are made to deliver the excuses to talk (which should be easier if they feel disgusted about doing it), and probe further from there.
… and also on p43 of today’s Indy, where they complain that it wasn’t covered elsewhere. Somebody there likes you.
And Andrew Sullivan picked up the story last week too (27 April). It wouldn’t have anything to do with my telling him about it.
Craig
http://tinyurl.com/crfjxe
Craig, this is where you need to stick your nose in and question the person that told you the interview was no longer needed. Ask them who told them it was so. Then follow the chain up and see where it leads. By using this tactic you will make some dodgy people very uncomfortable and less liable to act undemocratically in the future. No one likes to stick their name in the frame. Force them to, especially in regard to the BBC which we all pay for.
Maybe you could get on the Daily Show? They’re tacking hard on torture at the moment. It could be an exchange for Sibel Edmonds (whose whistle-blowing was reported in the Sunday Times but not its sister papers in the States). Maybe then it would be smuggled into the news here, within articles and posts about the show.
Congratulations on your evidence to the Committee last week, Craig. Good work.