The Guardian hit a new low in Amelia Hill’s report on Julian Assange’s appearance at the Oxford Union. Hill moved beyond propaganda to downright lies.
This is easy to show. Read through Hill’s “report”. Then zip to 20 minutes and 55 seconds of the recording of Assange speaking at the event Hill misreports, and simply listen to the applause from the Oxford Union after Assange stops speaking.
Just that hearty applause is sufficient to show that the entire thrust and argument of Amelia Hill’s article moves beyong distortion or misreprentation – in themselves dreadful sins in a journalist – and into the field of outright lies. Her entire piece is intended to give the impression that the event was a failure and the audience were hostile to Assange. That is completely untrue.
Much of what Hill wrote is not journalism at all. What does this actually mean?
“His critics were reasoned, those who queued for over an hour in the snow to hear him speak were thoughtful. It was Julian Assange – the man at the centre of controversy – who refused to be gracious.”
Hill manages to quote five full sentences of the organiser of the anti-Assange demonstration (which I counted at 37 people) while giving us not one single sentence of Assange’s twenty minute address. Nor a single sentence of Tom Fingar, the senior US security official who was receiving the Sam Adams award. Even more remarkably, all three students Hill could find to interview were hostile to Assange. In a hall of 450 students who applauded Assange enthusiastically and many of whom crowded round to shake my hand after the event, Hill was apparently unable to find a single person who did not share the Rusbridger line on Julian Assange.
Hill is not a journalist – she is a pathetic grovelling lickspittle who should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
Here is the answer to the question about cyber-terrorism of which Amelia Hill writes:
“A question about cyber-terrorism was greeted with verbose warmth”
As you can see, Assange’s answer is serious, detailed, thoughtful and not patronising to the student. Hill’s characterisation – again without giving a word of Assange’s actual answer – is not one that could genuinely be maintained. Can anybody – and I mean this as a real question – can anybody look at that answer and believe that “Verbose warmth” is a fair and reasonable way to communicate what had been said to an audience who had not seen it? Or is it just an appalling piece of hostile propaganda by Hill?
The night before Assange’s contribution at the union, John Bolton had been there as guest speaker. John Bolton is a war criminal whose actions deliberately and directly contributed to the launching of an illegal war which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet there had not been one single Oxford student picketing the hosting of John Bolton, and Amelia Hill did not turn up to vilify him. My main contribution to the Sam Adams event was to point to this as an example of the way people are manipulated by the mainstream media into adopting seriously warped moral values.
Amelia Hill is one of the warpers, the distorters of reality. The Guardian calls her a “Special Investigative Correspondent.” She is actually a degraded purveyor of lies on behalf of the establishment. Sickening.
Special investigative correspondent fot the Guardian?. Investigating what?.How to peddle the crap that you have been told to write.At least try to make it look like you are a journalist, this is tooooo obvious.Mrs Hill i grade you a d-minus, could try harder.
Interestingly, the Hill article seems to have no comment thread available.
Perhaps Hill should be nominated for a Shammie award.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/welcome-to-the-shammies-the-media-awards-that-recognise-truly-unsung-talent
Yes – also a prize to anyone who can sneak a link to this on a Guardian Comment is Free thread without the moderators noticing. A comment like “Great article here on why Tony Blair should make a comeback”, followed by the link, should do it!
A strange pot pourri of articles. As good a knife wielder as Aitkenhead from the same stable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ameliahill
I see she got mention of the HMD in.
Israel is demanding apologies for the Scarfe cartoon.
Israel to Demand Apology for ‘Anti-Semitic’ Netanyahu Cartoon
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33755.htm
William A Cook responds.
Verbal Defecation Buries Truth
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33758.htm
Craig can you not post link to your appearance at the same event?
No, come on, Craig. No sitting on the fence. Tell us what you really think of the snivelling little creep. LOL.
Tournesol
The Oxford Union haven’t put my contribution online.
They have accidently or expertly managed to break Julians audio stream from 30 seconds onward, at 240, 360 and 480p quality at least.
Should the online version of Hill’s propaganda continue not to permit comments, that in itself speaks digital volumes. Personally I’d give Brother Julian 2-out-of-10 as social charmer, having been on the receiving end of his—to be frank—embarrassing authoritarian personality disorder some weeks before the Swedish stitch-up. The Guardian crew need to cough up & spit down the lav their festering sour grapes. Accept that the cause of open governance & free expression—the citizen’s right to know, the cause, in other words, of journalism versus the modern State—far outweighs their own ex-groupie grievance with Assange. But that won’t happen. Their extended Kings Cross hissy fit seems set to accompany what was once a great paper, long infested these days with mindless & leprous life-style shite, into ever-deeper penury. Piteous. It’s now appropriate for Rusbridger to drag his head away from his piano. And dangle it over that nearby canal in shame.
@thatcrab. Yes, it would appear that these particular Oxford types are technologically challenged. I believe it is only a problem for those listening with a mono device. I can hear the audio OK on my stereo speakers.
@Jonangus Mackay. There are comments allowed on this other Amelia Hill piece on Assange’s exposure of the Hollywood BS script:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/24/julian-assange-attacks-wikileaks-film
So you can respond if you wish.
Actually less vitriolic than I expected, Craig’s response that is, but what struck me was that Hill’s piece for the Guardian was the only report (at least the only one I can find) of the meeting that appeared in the mainstream press and that wasn’t on the front page for very long.
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/julian-assange-should-not-be-given-a-voice-by-the-oxford-union-8461577.html
“Yes, it would appear that these particular Oxford types are technologically challenged…”
Venceremos, Cambridge is the place for technology (i.e. being able to do things). Oxford is more focused on talking. [Disclosure: although a Cambridge grad, I was a talking specialist myself (history)].
Venceremos – thankyou that is right – they have put the the audio into the stereo separation channel, so it cancels itself out if played on a single speaker. That all quality settings are affected, makes it quite suspicious to me.
It would be interesting to see a discussion of this report of the use of brutality and torture by British forces in Iraq.
@Venceremos:
.
Just checked. This particular greasy contribution to the State Department’s gargantuan black propaganda effort still doesn’t permit comments. Attempt to place a comment elsewhere on the Guardian site? Thanks for the suggestion.
.
Long ago gave up conniving in its sustained Blatcherite lie, i.e. ‘Comment is Free.’ Not because I’d ever been censored. But because of what its immoderate extremist ‘moderators’ are reported habitually to do to the contributions of others. I’m opposed—on principle—to censorship.
“verbose warmth” ?
Apart from its lack of accuracy, it’s a bloody silly expression and hardly coherent English : a reply to a question might be verbose, but how can it be “warmth”?
**********
By the way, I could have sworn I saw John Bolton in the arrivals hall of Brussels airport on Monday morning. I suppose nobody knows whether he was actually in Brussers or not that day, but does anyone know what the old bigger’s up to these days. Creating mischief certainly, but how and where….?
sorry, “old bugger” not “old bigger” – or was that a Freudian slip.
I like this irate comment on the Oxford Union clip of Assange’s contribution.
“Please sort the fucking sound out Oxford Union! How hard is it to upload film to youtube?!!”
Another YouTube comment on the Assange clip notes that the sound comes back after he has finished speaking. Hmmm.
I tried for quite some time to post on the Guardian website last November, explaining why I would not be buying the paper any more but if my message appeared anywhere I couldn’t fine it.
But there are quite a lot of quite intelligent people working for The Guardian. They must be trying very hard to go around with their eyes shut. There are also quite a lot of email addresses on their website. Do you think it would help if they got a steady selection of emails explaining why similarly intelligent readers will remember when they’ve seen writers following an editorial ‘party line’ into destructive dishonesty, and not trust them again?
Sorry -that should be ‘I couldn’t find it’.
@Habbabkuk. Agreed. Is “verbose warmth” meant to be some kind of snide allusion to “hot air”? If it is, her article is its written equivalent because–as can be seen from the clip–he was making some serious and important points.
Craig. I fear the mainstream (or ‘lamestream’ as I saw it called the other day) is only getting worse and worse. I really do believe we are witnessing the slide towards a major multifaceted global collapse. That certainly doesn’t mean we don’t fight its progression however!
Hope you are well.
Not surprising they borked the sound just after the shot of a surly Fingar, Julian made a good speech, and the audience applause sounded appreciative despite the official and unofficial discouragements at large.
[blockquote] The night before Assange’s contribution at the union, John Bolton had been there as guest speaker. John Bolton is a war criminal whose actions deliberately and directly contributed to the launching of an illegal war which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet there had not been one single Oxford student picketing the hosting of John Bolton, and Amelia Hill did not turn up to vilify him.[/blockquote]
Yes, that says it all doesn’t it – about the Oxford students, Hill and the Guardian. I think Pilger was right: identity politics obscures issues of imperialism and war.
Good to see you blogging again Craig.
Get better soon, we need you!
See Pilger’s argument here: http://johnpilger.com/articles/protect-assange-don-t-abuse-him
I liked this comment on an article in the Oxford Student which reported the protests against Assange speaking at the Oxford Union:
http://oxfordstudent.com/2013/01/17/protests-at-assange-platform/