Jonathan Cook

Raffi Berg may be fighting in the courts for damages, but it's really the BBC in the dock – for being utterly wedded to an editor whose objectivity on Israel is so clearly in question. Read my latest here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/bbc-editors-…

Has a single Western media outlet reported that in order to carry out the extra judicial killing of Ali Larijani, Israel murdered an additional 100 civilians? Were those 100 people not on the West's liberation list?

Of course, it's a commercial decision. Nonetheless, in seeking to soak up the independence vote, Newsquest has allowed its editor to go populist. In part, that doubtless tells us something about Scotland's marginality in global politics. It's risk-free for Newsquest. But it also gives us a glimpse of what a media freed of an imposed corporate agenda would look like. And that's nothing like the media we have in London.

@JayAlfons1 @Jonathan_K_Cook Newsquest has titles on both sides. This isn't some principled stance - it's commercial expediency.

Scottish newspaper The National is a constant reminder of what an English newspaper might look like – if they weren't all owned by billionaires.

A militia of Jewish settlers, backed by the Israeli state, attacked a Palestinian village, sexually assaulted a Palestinian man in front of his wife and children, beat a 74-year-old man with clubs, threatened the small children there with rape, and beat and abused two human rights activists, one American, the other Portuguese. Another typical day – one of 21,500 such days – under Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank. More here: archive.ph/CbnBH

Chris Hedges: "True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope." Most westerners are in a state of despair. Those who refuse to succumb are the people our leaders label "haters" and "terrorists". chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-world-ac…

BBC insiders have repeatedly identified Raffi Berg ‘as the figure who most keenly shapes BBC coverage in ways that have soft-soaped Israel’s crimes in Gaza.’ As one former BBC journalist said: ‘This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel’.

For 23 years, Javier Bardem has shown why he's a mensch. For those same 23 years, almost everyone else in Hollywood has kept their heads down.

Powerful, humane words from susan abulhawa as she confronts an act of terrible cowardice by Mayor Mamdani. His betrayal begs the question: Can our political system ever produce a politician capable of representing humanity rather than the Epstein class?

my response to Mayor Mamdani, the reporters calling me, etc.

The Guardian reports, with an entirely straight face, that billionaire Matthias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, promises to guarantee the Telegraph's "editorial independence" even as it also notes staff must sign on to a corporate constitution requiring their support for Israel. Billionaires don't own papers so they can foster journalistic excellence, or to ensure a full panoply of views are represented. They own media to shape our understanding of the world, so we regard anything that benefits billionaires as in our interests too. That's why it seems normal to have a world where profits come first – whether from fossil fuels, AI or the war industry – even if it means our species commits suicide in the process.

Israeli soldiers shoot into a Palestinian family's car in the illegally occupied West Bank. Khaled, 11, sees his two brothers, 5 and 7, killed by the bullets, and watches his mum and dad bleed to death. Soldiers, shouting 'We killed some dogs', grab the boy, beat him and yell 'Liar!' when he says the others in the car were his family. Another normal day in the West Bank. More here: archive.ph/ZOG4W

If western media were as objective as they claim, they would report a Netanyahu decapitation strike in exactly the same way they report a decapitation strike against the leaders of Iran or Hezbollah. In fact, just like this: jonathancook.substack.com/p/is-this-how-…

Hi Camilla Given your father is CEO of UK Lawyers for Israel & your mother a Director, do you think you are a balanced & impartial political editor of The Sunday Telegraph? Shouldn't you be concerning yourself with UKLFI being under investigation by the Charity Commission? Thanks Niz

In case you didn’t know who the actual nuclear threat was all along.

The British establishment media is a marvel They’ve turned Labour allowing the US Air Force to bomb the shit out of Iran from UK bases into “Starmer standing up to Trump” Level of obedience and servitude within elite UK journalist circles—with no gulags—is genuinely incredible

There is a stage of decline where empire no longer seeks competent managers. It seeks performers who can metabolize humiliation into energy. That is Trump’s function. America has lost wars, lost trust, lost legitimacy, lost the future. Trump converts that decay into theater. He takes civilizational shame and recycles it as swagger. Takes strategic failure and repackages it as brute honesty. Takes moral collapse and sells it as strength. He is not solving the contradiction. He is making it dance. That is why he fascinates even those who fear him. He turns decomposition into content.

More than half the population in northern Israel belong to Israel's much-discriminated Palestinian minority. It doesn't occur to the racist Guardian to ask them what they think of Israel's latest illegal war.

Two interviews by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg – one of an Iranian leader, the other of an Israeli leader – reveal the starkly different standards the two states are held to by the British media. As Media Lens show, this isn't journalism, it's propaganda: medialens.substack.com/p/how-on-earth…

Raffi Berg may be fighting through the courts for damages from Owen Jones, but it's really the BBC in the dock – for being utterly wedded to an editor whose objectivity on Israel is so clearly in question. Read my latest article here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/bbc-editors-…

One might have imagined that the BBC was quietly pressuring its online Middle East editor Raffi Berg to withdraw his libel case against journalist Owen Jones from the outset. Why? Because it is drawing even more attention both to the scandalous failings by the BBC to properly cover Israeli war crimes in Gaza and give voice to the experiences of Palestinians facing genocide, and to the corporation’s refusal to listen to large-scale unrest among staff at those failings. Berg may be fighting the court case but it is really the BBC in the dock – for employing someone like Berg as their online Middle East editor when the BBC claims that not only does it strive to be objective, but it strives to be seen to be objective. The Middle East is probably the most sensitive region the BBC covers. And yet, as Jones and BBC staff make clear in the article, Berg – at a personal and ideological level – has done little to hide his own sympathies. He has utterly failed to present himself as objective. The furore Berg has provoked among staff, and the reputational damage Jones’ article has caused the BBC, should have ensured that, at a minimum, the online editor was moved to another position. More properly, an internal inquiry should have been set up to investigate staff complaints. But in fact, quite the opposite has happened. BBC executives have not only rallied to Berg’s side, suggesting that critics are being antisemitic. They also appear to be fine with him further airing the corporation’s dirty linen in a very public trial. Extraordinarily, the BBC appears to have been so hands-off regarding Berg’s libel case that he felt emboldened to hire a contentious firm like Patron Law, prominently led by a strong advocate for Israel, to act as his legal representative. All of which is making Jones’ case for him. Berg appears to have been protected from any repercussions at the BBC because his publicly partisan views on Israel and Palestine were exactly what BBC executives were looking for. We can speculate why. In their 2009 book More Bad News From Israel, academics Greg Philo and Mike Berry report a senior BBC news editor telling them: “We wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis.” A 2012 article in the London Evening Standard described BBC executives – the people who appointed Berg to the post of online Middle East editor a few months later – as in a state of permanent terror about potential complaints from Israel. A BBC insider told the paper: “To describe them as like headless chickens running all over the place would be to convey an impression of too much order and cohesion. They are cowering in corners. The fear is palpable.” Most likely Berg was hired for the job because BBC executives were confident that his own take on events in the Middle East would largely keep “the Israelis” happy. The extent to which, in the process, he would infuriate journalists around him was considered of much less significance. This is an extract from my latest article BBC editor's libel case against Owen Jones falls at the first hurdle. Here's why. Find a link to the rest in the reply post ⬇️