Royal continues fight with UK newspapers after attacking treatment of his wife, Meghan
Prince Harry has issued legal proceedings against the owners of the Sun and the Daily Mirror over alleged phone hacking, in an escalation of his all-out war with the British newspaper industry.
The decision follows Harry’s strongly worded attack on the British media’s treatment of his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Continue reading...Action comes after newspaper has published numerous embarrassing stories about her
The Mail on Sunday (MoS) published numerous embarrassing stories about Meghan in the run-up to her wedding to Prince Harry. Many of them required the cooperation of Meghan’s estranged father, Thomas Markle, who helped the newspaper produce numerous articles including staged paparazzi photos.
Continue reading...Clubs say Pemsel hired because of his ‘straightforward style and personal integrity’
The Premier League has appointed the Guardian’s David Pemsel as its new chief executive.
Confirmation of the appointment came at a Premier League meeting on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...Prince compares wife’s treatment to Diana’s as proceedings over private letter are announced
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has taken the unusual decision to sue the publisher of the Mail on Sunday after the newspaper published a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father.
The decision came as Prince Harry launched an extraordinary and highly personal attack on the British tabloid press and its treatment of his wife, saying he could no longer be a “silent witness to her private suffering”.
Continue reading...UK media freedom envoy speaks out after targeted killing of Jamal Khashoggi
A “glaring gap” exists in the world’s ability to investigate targeted state killings of human rights defenders and journalists such as Jamal Khashoggi, said Amal Clooney, the UK special envoy on media freedom.
She also said the UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard, who undertook the UN’s investigation into Khashoggi’s murder, “had been forced heroically to manage a large-scale investigation with ridiculously few resources”.
Continue reading...The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have received an apology from the paper after press regulator ruling
The Sun newspaper has apologised to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex after the press regulator ruled it had breached accuracy guidelines in an article about an alleged staff parking ban at their home.
In a front page story headlined “NOT IN MEG BACK YARD” published in April, the newspaper claimed Prince Harry and Meghan had upset staff by imposing a ban on “low-paid staff” using a car park near Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.
Continue reading...North Antrim MP accused Sam McBride of lying as part of agenda to destroy DUP
Ian Paisley Jr has been strongly criticised by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) for personal comments he made about a reporter in Belfast.
The North Antrim MP accused the News Letter’s political editor, Sam McBride, of lying as part of “an agenda to attempt to undermine and destroy the DUP”. In a 750-word Facebook post, since removed, Paisley described the journalist as “incredibly immature, intellectually weak and a simplistic fellow”.
Continue reading...A new book says the actor was scared of going on the record at first but then encouraged other women to speak out
Gwyneth Paltrow has been named a key figure in the New York Times story that first catalogued a series of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and led to the film producer’s dismissal from his own company and subsequent prosecution.
In a new book titled She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey – the New York Times reporters whose story on 5 October 2017 triggered Weinstein’s downfall – Paltrow is said to have been “scared to go on the record but became an early, crucial source, sharing her account of sexual harassment and trying to recruit other actresses to speak”.
Continue reading...Independent owner hosted Saudi leader in London last year
Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Independent and the Evening Standard, hosted a private dinner for the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, raising further questions about the media mogul’s links to the de facto ruler of the Middle Eastern kingdom.
Lebedev’s news outlets are being investigated due to public interest concerns over a mysterious Saudi investment made through a web of offshore bank accounts, with the UK government suggesting that the Independent and Evening Standard are now part-owned by the Saudi state. The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, has until Friday to decide whether or not to appeal against a court ruling that the UK government missed a deadline to intervene in the deal.
Continue reading...Chun Han Wong, who covered Xi Jinping extensively, is in effect expelled from country
Chinese authorities have declined to renew the press credentials of a Beijing-based Wall Street Journal reporter, in effect expelling a journalist who extensively covered President Xi Jinping and Communist party politics.
The foreign ministry said on Friday in response to a faxed question about the Singaporean reporter Chun Han Wong’s visa that some foreign journalists with the “evil intention to smear and attack China” were not welcome.
Continue reading...Was it murder? Suicide? Or just an accident? Almost 30 years before Jeffrey Epstein’s demise, Ghislaine Maxwell was caught up in another shocking and scandal-ridden mystery
At one time, everyone knew where to find Ghislaine Maxwell. The former aide-de-camp of the disgraced, now deceased, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was a fixture in Manhattan’s most fashionable salons. With an impressive list of contacts, including Prince Andrew and Chelsea Clinton, she was a regular at fundraisers, book launches and society weddings.
The last place anyone would have expected to see her was a Los Angeles shopping mall, where the 57-year-old was photographed in a burger joint last week, just days after Epstein’s suicide in a New York jail, where he was being held on charges of sex trafficking underage girls.
Continue reading...Original headline read ‘Trump urges unity vs racism’ – prompting accusations that newspaper was feeding president’s narrative
The New York Times was forced to change its front-page headline for Tuesday’s newspaper amid an intense backlash over its portrayal of Donald Trump’s statement on the twin mass shootings that left 31 people dead.
The original headline read “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS RACISM”. Many people complained that the wording fed Trump’s claims that those who criticised his persistent anti-immigrant rhetoric – some of which was parroted in the El Paso gunman’s alleged manifesto – were playing politics.
Continue reading...A few columns ago I cited a story often told among journalists, for fun and to caution against self-importance, usually in vain. Variously attributed to small newspapers in remote locations at some time in the 19th century, an editorial discussing Russian foreign policy is said to have thundered: “We warn the Tsar!”
Related: The Last Czars: the historical drama that the whole of Russia is laughing at
Continue reading...News outlets unsure who employs Saudi investor after fears of state interference
The Evening Standard and the Independent say they are unsure who employs the Saudi Arabian businessman who bought a substantial stake in both news outlets, amid concerns that the Saudi government could exert editorial influence over them.
The Russian oligarch’s son Evgeny Lebedev, who controls both publications, sold 30% stakes in them to offshore companies fronted by a Saudi businessman, Sultan Mohamed Abuljadayel.
Continue reading...Fuelled by hard drugs and righteous anger, his incendiary prose shook America. Could our writer channel his spirit by spending a night at the typewriter where it all happened?
It is 4.30 on a Thursday morning and I am writing these words on the big red IBM Selectric III that once belonged to Hunter S Thompson. Owl Farm, Thompson’s “fortified compound” in Woody Creek, Colorado, is dark and silent outside. Even the peacocks he raised are sleeping. The only sound anywhere is the warm hum of this electric typewriter and the mechanical rhythm of its key strikes, as clear and certain as gunfire.
In April, Thompson’s widow, Anita, began renting out the writer’s cabin to help support the Hunter S Thompson scholarship for veterans at Columbia University, where both she and Hunter studied. It sits beside the main Thompson home on a 17-hectare estate marked with hoof prints and elk droppings that gradually rises towards a mountain range. A short walk uphill is the spot where Thompson’s ashes were fired into the sky from a 153ft tower in the shape of a “Gonzo fist”, a logo he first adopted during his unsuccessful 1970 campaign to be sheriff of nearby Aspen. Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, picked up the $3m tab for that elaborate sendoff, which took place shortly after Thompson killed himself in 2005.
Continue reading...After much derision, magazine says 5ft 5in ex-president was on step above wife, Carla Bruni
As soon as this week’s cover of Paris Match magazine featuring Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni was released, the questions began: how was the diminutive former French president seemingly taller than his towering wife?
The front-page photoshoot might have sparked speculation the 64-year-old rightwinger was thinking of a political comeback, coming hot on the heels of his new book called Passions, which has become a summer bestseller.
Continue reading...Federal police reportedly asked money laundering unit to investigate the ‘financial activities’ of the US journalist
Brazil’s Bar Association, journalists and opposition lawmakers have reacted with outrage to reports that the country’s federal police plan to investigate the bank accounts of an American journalist who published leaked conversations between prosecutors and the graft-busting judge who is now Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
The rightwing site the Antagonist (O Antagonista) reported on Tuesday that federal police had asked a money-laundering unit at Brazil’s finance ministry to investigate the “financial activities” of Glenn Greenwald.
Continue reading...The UN report into October’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is the fullest account yet of events and as horrifying as one would expect. Agnes Callamard, the special rapporteur, describes a “deliberate, premeditated execution”; secretly recorded conversations before his visit discussed the arrival of the “sacrificial animal” and dismemberment of a body. She concludes that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia should be investigated because there is “credible evidence” that he and other senior officials are liable for the killing – a conclusion also reached by the CIA – despite the kingdom’s insistence that it was a rogue operation.
No reminder should be needed of the brutality of the killing of Khashoggi, a widely respected journalist living in Washington. Even Saudi Arabia’s business and diplomatic allies blanched, or at least felt obliged to put some distance between themselves and the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The kingdom, after repeated lies about what happened, announced that it would try 11 suspects for his murder.
Continue reading...Analysis: the departing White House spokeswoman, who has not held a press briefing in months, spun a web of deceit in her role
“You’re fired!”
Donald Trump was joking when he barked these words at his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in April – on a night when both were snubbing the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Continue reading...Protesters call for charges to be brought against police officers who arrested journalist
Hundreds of people have been detained in central Moscow as protesters demanded charges be brought against the police officers who planted drugs on Ivan Golunov, an investigative journalist whose arrest sparked widespread public anger.
Alexei Navalny, a prominent Kremlin critic, was among those arrested when police, some clad in riot gear, moved in on 1,500 peaceful protesters who were attempting to reach the headquarters of the interior ministry that oversees police work. The protest, which was not approved by the authorities, took place on Russia Day, a national holiday in honour of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.
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