10 December 2019|The Interregnum|Mohamed Elmaazi
Journalist James Ball once worked with WikiLeaks to reveal war crimes perpetrated by US and UK forces, though he later argued that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had nothing to fear if he left the Ecuadorian embassy were he received diplomatic asylum. Ball regularly accuses the Russian state with interfering in the affairs of other countries.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons
Former Guardian Journalist James Ball has raised a number of eyebrows on social media after claiming that “Labour should have known better” than to publish leaked documents exposing details of UK-US trade negotiations. The negotiations revealed, among other things, that the National Health Service is ‘on the table’:
The work Reuters did last week to check this was good and reasonable, even if the Telegraph used it in a silly way.
It is not hard to know the signs document dumps may have originated from Russian action. Labour should have thought harder before using it in this way. https://t.co/Jizie44sI6
— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) December 7, 2019
The remarks from Ball are particularly curious given that he serves as Global editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and because he once worked with WikiLeaks to reveal war crimes perpetrated by US and UK troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Balls Twitter thread, which was published over the weekend, finished by saying that he would “mute” people whose responses were “wildly irrational”.
Users of the Twitter social media platform expressed their consternation over an investigative journalist’s apparent opposition to publication of newsworthy documents:
“Labour should have thought harder” and then done what, exactly? What possible plausible different course of action was there? It would have been ridiculous — politically & morally — for them not to have shared the revelations (the actual story here BTW) with the UK public.
— Hicham Yezza (@HichamYezza) December 7, 2019
The release of information which is of vital importance to the public is good. No caveats. If you think otherwise you are advocating that a political party should wilfully mislead the public and keep them in the dark.
— Hawkeye Soames (@HawkeyeSoames) December 7, 2019
It does not matter – it’s our money and our NHS. PS I’m sure your “investigative” (tee-hee) body claimed to be working on uncovering the “Russia dossier” – made much progress? Johnson himself will release it after the election.
— Mairead OutsideTheBubble #LeslieStoleMyVote (@imelda_mairead) December 7, 2019
Some of the responses explicitly called-out Ball for his apparent attempts to undermine the revelation by linking them to Russia:
A Russian disinformation campaign to keep the public informed on key issues?
— Taryn Jay 🌹 (@FeralHog421) December 7, 2019
Those dastardly Russians and their, um, information campaign…
— Dr Eleanor Janega (@GoingMedieval) December 7, 2019
Jimmy “Red Scare” Bollock
— James A. Cameron oh no it’s the month with Xmas in (@DrJACameron) December 7, 2019
A number of replies sarcastically expressed what they believed was the ultimate takeaway from Ball’s twitter thread:
“Labour should never attack the Tories as we’ll simply make up some bollocks about it being linked to Russia” – Jim Testicle
— Craig (@RealRasalGhul) December 7, 2019
Labour should have looked at the documents that show that the government is lying and shoved them in the shredder.
Anyone in possession of anything that could hurt the Tories, in anyway, should do this.
— sack of vote Labour tots (@Marro_Nick) December 7, 2019
On the same day as Ball’s thread the trade justice experts Global Justice Now released a statement saying:
“The leak of the Trump Trade Files has revealed the threat to NHS drug prices, to food standards and to our democracy itself from a US-UK trade deal. Wherever the leak came from, no one has disputed that the documents are real. They are information, not disinformation.”
A history of pushing Russiagate narratives
Ball has published accounts accusing Russia of ‘interference’ in the US elections including hacking the computers of the US Democratic National Committee computers and passing the information onto WikiLeaks, a charge WikiLeaks denies. Yet Ball’s work, which assumes as fact that the Russian state actively interfered in the US 2016 election, has never referenced the work of journalist Aaron Maté who recently won an award for his work exposing the weaknesses of the Russiagate narratives.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently raised money online on the basis that they were planning on suing the UK government for refusing to publish the ‘Russia’ report on alleged Russian state interference before the UK general election. However, two weeks later on 27 November Jame Ball wrote an article for The Bureau explaining that their case was not strong enough to follow through on their planned lawsuit.