https://nitter.poast.org/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1930573981360259370#m

Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook
Jun 5
Many thanks to all of you who supported my nomination in the Amnesty Media Awards People’s Choice category.

The awards ceremony was held last night. I didn’t win. That honour went to Owen Jones. Congratulations to him for his work exposing Israel and the media’s lies through the past 20 months of genocide.

I took with me to the ceremony the investigative journalist Asa Winstanley.

Had I won and had the chance to make an acceptance speech, I wanted to highlight his case. He, along with other independent journalists, has been targeted for persecution by the police, doubtless under political direction, for his work on Gaza.

The police have been using the most expansive interpretation possible of the UK's draconian terrorism laws. Last month the courts ruled that the police had illegally seized his electronic devices.

Incredibly, no media outlet in the UK has thought it worth reporting either the drawn raid on his home last year, or the court’s subsequent finding of law-breaking by the police in seizing the electronic devices of an accredited journalist.

Asa still has a police investigation hanging over him, with a potential jail sentence of 14 years for doing journalism.

There are obvious parallels with the media’s failure to report, or protest, the incarceration for many years of Julian Assange in a London high-security prison for doing journalism that embarrassed the British and US national security states by bringing to light their war crimes.

Sadly, there has been little solidarity shown by other journalists towards those, like Asa, who do not have the institutional backing they often enjoy.

We sabotage our own work as journalists if we focus exclusively on the all-too-obvious assault on human rights far away in Gaza but refuse to consider the more veiled assault on human rights on our own doorstep. The two are connected.

I call on fellow journalists – and most especially the prominent journalists who were nominated for the People’s Choice award – to use their platforms to protest this concerted attack on our profession, on our ability to hold power to account.

Journalism should never be treated as a club, least of all by journalists. And yet all too often it is. We are here to defend a principle: that the centres of power in our societies must be scrutinised and held to account. That is our job.

That principle is far bigger than any single journalist, any single ego. Time for us to show proper solidarity with fellow journalists – and journalism.

*****

The 'sadly there has been little solidarity' paragraph was edited from the original:

'Sadly, as far as I am aware, none of the other finalists in what was a celebration of human rights journalism by Amnesty has shown any solidarity with Asa – or any of the other journalists currently being persecuted by the British state.'

Because Owen Jones responded that he had in fact tweeted about the Asa Winstanley case - twice!

*****

https://xcancel.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1930568700278563048#m

Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno
Jun 5
Replying to @Jonathan_K_Cook
Hi Jonathan,

Firstly thank you for your words and your work exposing Israel's genocide.

But I do want to make a correction here. It's not true that I haven't shown solidarity with @AsaWinstanley, as you can see here:

https://xcancel.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1928449367070884217

and here:

https://xcancel.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1847023489544237216

That's despite Asa's repeatedly expressed opinions about me, because my view is that solidarity is unconditional.

I should absolutely be scrutinised and criticised. But I do find that - too often - a lot of the criticisms I get which drive the most passionate attacks are based on things that aren't true.

This is one example of that. So I'd appreciate it if you'd correct what you said here, because it isn't true at all.

*****

To which JC replied:

'Hi Owen.

Apologies. I have edited my original post to correct that. But I would add that the threat to journalists from the UK's terrorism laws, especially for those without a large platform like yours, is not a one-off. It is ongoing. It needs to be kept in the spotlight because this is an attack, not just on one journalist, but on journalism itself.'

But two tweets aren't really good enough, especially since he doesn't even mention Asa by name in them:

'This was a scandalously unlawful attempt to intimidate and silence a journalist over the question of Palestine. This reflects an ever escalating crackdown across the West against those who speak out against one of the great crimes of our age.' and 'This speaks to a mounting crackdown on pro-Palestinian journalists. There's not even any transparency about what the accusations are. Meanwhile openly supporting - and indeed arming - Israel's genocidal war remains a respectable, mainstream position.' (the first mentions Asa in the quoted tweet)

And I'm going to assume he hasn't talked about it on his youtube show otherwise he would have trumpeted that. All of which smacks of pro-forma box-ticking because he feels he has to say something, but nowhere near the attention it deserves.

Still no results for Richard Medhurst or Sarah Wilkinson - or for their twitter handles - when you search Jones' feed. Clearly they're beyond the pale at graun towers and Jones has either been told as much or he knows it instinctively.

I