Uncertainty over who will be deported tempers West Bank mood after deal with Israel to free Gilad Shalit When the news came through that the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was to be released, a wave of relief spread across the West Bank. There are currently around 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, of whom 180 are children. And this Saturday, 1,026 families will hear whether their husband, wife, child or sister will be among the prisoners Israel will free in return for its captive sergeant. The wait is fraught with hope and anxiety. Among those due to be released are people convicted of mass murders, but there are also those who were simply members of organisations banned by Israel, or who threw rocks at Israeli soldiers. Mohamed Tamimi, 36, has not seen his sister Ahlan since four years ago, when he was last granted a permit to see her in prison. Ahlan is serving 16 life sentences for driving a suicide bomber to a Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001. The blast killed 15 people and injured 130, in one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Israel’s history. She is reported to be among those marked for release, but her family knows nothing for certain. As news reports say she will be sent to Jordan, Mohamed is preparing to travel there this weekend. “It’s been a very tense week,” he said. “I still don’t know anything. News reports say she is going to be deported to Jordan, but I still don’t know if she’ll be going there or some other country. I have no idea what visas I’m going to need.” Ahlan was arrested when she was 22 years old, during the height of the intifada. Mohamed said her involvement in the bombing came as a huge shock to her family. He assumed Hamas recruited her at Bir Zeit University, where she was studying journalism. She was a perfect target, he said – she did not wear a headscarf and spoke fluent English, so would have aroused little suspicion from Israeli soldiers: “I don’t want to justify her actions. She has a deep connection with this land, she wanted to be part of the resistance. There was so much pressure on us at that time, so much death, frustration – but really, I don’t think she fully thought through what she was doing.”On Thursday a small group of protesters staged a demonstration in Ramallah’s Manara Square, linked in prisoner’s chains in solidarity with the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israel’s jails. Among the demonstrators was Hassan Karaja, whose sister Sumoud is among the hunger strikers. Hassan said Sumoud, who taught health and nutrition, was imprisoned for attempting to cross from Ramallah into Jerusalem without the permit required by West Bank inhabitants. Israel accused her of stabbing an Israeli soldier at Qalandiya checkpoint and earlier this year she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. “She wasn’t trying to do anything that wasn’t her right,” said Karaja, 26. “I am very happy – I am sure she will soon be free. It’s important for her to complete her education. But I’m very sad for the families of prisoners who will stay in jail and for those who will be deported to Gaza, Egypt, Jordan and who knows where.” Israeli authorities have confirmed that 203 of the first 450 prisoners to be released will be sent abroad. A total of 110 of those are from the West Bank. Ahlan Tamimi is now 31, and Mohamed hopes she will be able to start a new life, with political activism behind her. She had wanted to become a journalist and was an honours student at Bir Zeit. Ahlan’s fiance, Nizar Tamimi, is also in prison, accused of killing a settler in the West Bank. It is still not clear whether he will be freed next week “My father and I want to see Ahlan in a white veil getting married. I want to see her children call me uncle,” said Mohamed. “But as happy as we are about this deal, it is not a complete happiness. Deportation will be so painful for Ahlan. I don’t know how she will cope with being banished from the land she is so devoted to.” Palestinian territories Gilad Shalit Israel Middle East Phoebe Greenwood guardian.co.uk
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Sirte stronghold edges close to falling with pro-Gaddafi troops stranded as rebels prepare to declare total victory The two men are singing in the back of a pick-up truck, sitting on the rails, their legs resting on a blanket that seems oddly lumpy. Sticking out from beneath it are two pairs of feet, one bare, one wearing socks. They are the feet of two pro-Gaddafi fighters killed in the fighting in the coastal city of Sirte. Thursday was a day of deaths on both sides. Government forces trying to enter the last pocket of Sirte held by pro-Gaddafi fighters were bogged down in a narrow street flooded with sewage and water. Sirte is an unremarkable town, its importance inflated by the fact that the deposed Libyan leader was born nearby and counts its main tribe among his staunchest supporters. But its fate is now being keenly watched around the world. The rebel government in Tripoli has declared – as foreign secretary William Hague told MPs in London – that its fall will mean the liberation of the entire country and trigger the start of a political process to build a new democracy. A street corner where, on Wednesday, it had been possible to walk and stare into a narrow canyon of shattered buildings, was at the centre of the battle. Instead of walking, one had to crawl as the pockets of defenders fired RPGs into buildings and at cars. In response government fighters pulled back a little and brought in tanks, placing them on a low, grassy rise crowned with a shattered white pavilion from where they could blast directly into the rooftop positions, setting fires, nibbling away at the concrete, filling the air with noise and dust. For the pro-Gaddafi fighters it is a hopeless situation. There is nowhere to go except deeper into an area of the city 750 metres wide by 500 metres deep that runs along the coast from the television station – with its pair of wrecked and punctured dishes – to the edge of District Two, overlooked by the pavilion and its sagging roof. The choices faced by Gaddafi’s loyalists are stark: to fight on and end up dead under a blanket like the men in the pick-up truck, or to come out, as one fighter in uniform did on Thursday morning. “You see that captive?” asked Ismail Taweel, a middle-aged fighter from the Harbus Katiba, a unit famous in Libya from the siege of Misrata, most of whose colleagues are in the desert near Bani Walid. He indicated a burly, bearded man with a face bruised from beating, crying with fear. “I want to ask him how many of them are left. I’ve just come from speaking to another captive. A Sudanese. He said there were few left and most were wearing green uniforms. We’re fighting the real soldiers now, not the mercenaries. He said some were trying to escape.” “They have one and a half square kilometres at most,” explained Dr Salah al-Obeidi, a commander from Benghazi who was a dentist before the war. “There are a hundred fighters, maybe a little more, holding us up. That is all.” Others put the number at 200. “They are finished. All they can do is surrender. There has been no attempt to negotiate with them,” Obeidi said. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We hear them talking on their radios. Talking about ‘rats’ and killing infidels.” Obeidi had a sheep in the back of his truck, ready to be slaughtered for the victory feast. When victory finally comes. On the roof of an unfinished building with a yellow water tank on top and the green flag of the Gaddafi troops, muzzle flashes were visible. Later the tanks tried to land their shells on top of it. Matthew VanDyke, the film-maker turned fighter who spent months in a Gaddafi jail, was at the front again on Thursday. “I was at the opening of the street yesterday fighting in my vehicle. Then we forced them back to the last buildings in the street, but now they have moved forward to the middle of the street again. The water comes up to the running boards. It is thigh deep when you go in and you can see the bullets hitting it. “A lot of the Gaddafi fighters have slipped out with the families escaping – guys you see of military age.” The Gaddafi forces left in Sirte cannot break out: there is no one to join. They cannot retake a town vast areas of which are now under government control. Why they fight on seems baffling to many of those facing them in these last days and hours of the battle for Sirte and indeed the war for Libya. As evening approached the dynamic of the stalled fighting seemed to change. An advance by government forces through an area of houses on the coast pushed from east to west beyond a tall aerial. Out of sight beyond a flooded series of streets it was possible to measure the progress only by smoke and by the sounds of the truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns and the explosions of tank fire and the recoilless rifles moving – it appeared – inexorably into the pocket. This is a battle that the government fighters now cannot lose. The only question is how many more must die before their victory is complete. Libya Middle East Africa Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest William Hague Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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President says US will call on international community to further isolate Iran – but doubts remain over whether plot was genuine The United States will apply the “toughest sanctions” to further isolate Iran over the alleged plan to murder the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Barack Obama said on Thursday, despite growing scepticism over the amateurish nature of the plot and the apparently shambolic nature of the main suspect. Obama repeated the US line that he would not take any options off the table in dealing with Iran, which is diplomatic code for the possibility of military action. Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the plot. US authorities said on Tuesday they had evidence of a plot by two men linked to Iran’s revolutionary guard to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, by setting off a bomb in a Washington restaurant. In addition to prosecutions, Obama said he would continue “to apply the toughest sanctions, and continue to mobilise the international community to make sure Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behaviour.” He said: “We don’t take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with Iran. But we will continue to apply the sort of pressure that will have a direct impact on the Iranian government until it makes a better choice in how it interacts with the rest of the international community,” he said at a news conference with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak. The president’s comments came as two congressional committees held hearings on Iran on Thursday. In testimony to the Senate Banking committee, David Cohen, the US Treasury’s under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the committee that the administration was considering sanctions against Iran’s central bank. Cohen described the alleged plot as a “dramatic reminder that the urgent and serious threat we face from Iran is not limited to Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, said the assassination plot “illustrates Iran’s active campaign” to partner with extremists groups and drug traffickers. But as more details have emerged, there has been growing scepticism over the true nature of the threat, not least because the main suspect has been revealed to be a car salesman, nicknamed “Scarface”, with a string of failed businesses behind him. Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, was arrested last month, and stands accused of running a global terror plot that stretched from Mexico to Tehran. He is accused of having links to Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The other suspect, Gholam Shakuri, is said by the US to be in Iran. But Tom Hosseini, a friend and former roommate of Arbabsiar’s, questioned his ability to carry out the plot and told the New York Times: “His socks would not match. He was always losing his keys and his cellphone.” Hosseini said when he last saw his friend two months ago, Arbabsiar told him he had been in Iran and was “making good money.” US officials concede that the plot and its alleged mastermind are unusual. ”We would expect to see the Quds Force cover their tracks more effectively,” one official told Reuters. Another said a plot to launch a violent attack inside the United States was ”very outside the pattern” of recent Quds Force activities. Kenneth Katzman, an Iran specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said there were elements of the alleged plot that did not make sense. ”The idea of using a Texas car salesman who is not really a Quds Force person himself, who has been in residence in the United States many years, that doesn’t add up,” Katzman said. ”There could have been some contact on this with the Quds Force, but the idea that this was some sort of directed, vetted, fully thought-through plot, approved at high levels in Tehran leadership I think defies credulity,” he said. Obama administration United States Iran Global terrorism Saudi Arabia US foreign policy Karen McVeigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …OWS protester says his college tuition should be paid by others because “That’s what I want”
October 13, 2011 No Comment
OWS protester says his college tuition should be paid by others because “That’s what I want!” Listening to this guy speak for two minutes, one realizes that whoever pays his college tuition, it’s a total waste of money. He sounds like Obama without his teleprompter. How many ways are there to say “Gimme”? Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : I Hate The Media Discovery Date : 11/10/2011 20:49 Number of articles : 5
Continue reading …A Tale of Two Protests: Media Cheer Wall Street Occupiers But Jeered Tea Partiers
October 13, 2011 No Comment
The Occupy Wall Street protestors have received overwhelmingly positive coverage from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks, as they used their airtime to publicize and promote the aggressively leftist movement. In just the first eleven days of October, ABC, CBS and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts with a whopping 33 full stories or interview segments on the protesters. This was a far cry from the greeting the Tea Party received from the Big Three as that conservative protest movement was initially ignored (only 13 total stories in all of 2009) and then reviled. Where the Tea Party was met with skeptical claims of their motivations — with some reporters claiming they were merely corporate backed puppets and others implying they were spurred on by their racist opposition to the first black president – the Occupy Wall Street crowd was depicted as an almost genial “grassroots” movement. While network reporters weren’t hesitant to describe the Tea Party as conservative, only once did a reporter attach even the “liberal” label to the overtly leftist Wall Street protestors. Network anchors like Brian Williams couldn’t be bothered with ideological labeling of the occupiers as he was, on the October 5 NBC Nightly News , too busy celebrating the arrival of the “massive protest movement” that “could well turn out to be the protest of this current era.” ABC’s Diane Sawyer was so excited she tripped herself up in hyperbole as she proclaimed, on the October 10 World News , that the movement had “spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries – every continent but Antarctica.” Sawyer would have to correct herself on a later edition of the program as she clarified it was “more than a thousand cities around the world – every continent but Antarctica.” – still a tremendous exaggeration. Most astoundingly, the networks’ Occupy Wall Street (OWS) stories were overwhelmingly sympathetic: Protesters and supporters of the movement dominated the soundbites, with 109 (87%) to just 8 critics (6%), with another 8 soundbites from neutral sources. Five of the eight soundbites unsympathetic to the protesters were brief clips of GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain blasting the occupiers. In addition to the 109 pro-OWS soundbites, seven times guests on the Big Three network morning shows expressed sympathy for the protestors. No guests opposed the protests. MRC analysts tracked all the stories on the Big Three broadcast networks’ evening and morning news programs (ABC’s World News and Good Morning America , CBS’s Evening News and The Early Show , NBC’s Nightly News and Today show) and found that from October 1 through October 11 network anchors, and reporters, in addition to the 33 full stories, delivered 15 brief items and 14 mentions in other stories not devoted strictly to the Wall Street protest. Very Few Liberal Labels for Lefty Protestors In 2009 Tea Partiers were repeatedly but accurately described as conservative. Back on the April 15, 2009 Today show, NBC’s Chuck Todd’s labeling was typical when he introduced the Tea Party movement to viewers this way: “There’s been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called Tea Parties around the country, hoping the historical reference will help galvanize Americans against the President’s economic ideas. But, I tell you, the idea hasn’t really caught on.” However, when it came to appropriately labeling the OWS crowd as leftist or liberals, it happened exactly one time, when on the October 11 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America , co-anchor George Stephanopoulous asked Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe if he thought the OWS protestors were the “liberal version of the Tea Party?” and wondered if that was a “good thing for the White House?” The only other usage of the world “liberal” came when Columbia University's Dorian Warren, on the October 1 NBC Nightly News asserted that the protesters were “a liberal version of the Tea Party” and obligingly offered: “I think this could potentially carry over into the 2012 elections and get people to the polls.” Then, on the October 9 edition of Sunday Morning , Rebecca Jarvis pegged Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin as “a liberal observer of the politics of the protest.” In fact, as the MRC’s Business & Media’s Julia Seymour documented, not one network report has called the protesters “radical,” “extreme,” “left-wing,” or “socialist.”
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Surfer finds himself standing on the thrashing shark off the coast of Oregon as he tries to catch a wave Doug Niblack was trying to catch another wave before going to work when his longboard hit something hard as rock off the Oregon coast and he found himself standing on the back of a thrashing great white shark. Looking down, he could see a dorsal fin in front of his feet as he stood on what he described as three metres (10ft) of back as wide as his surfboard and as black as his own Neoprene wetsuit. A tail thrashed back and forth and the water churned around him. “It was pretty terrifying just seeing the shape emerge out of nothing and just being under me,” he told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “And the fin coming out of the water. It was just like the movies.” The several seconds Niblack spent on the back of the great white on Monday off Seaside, Oregon, was a rare encounter, but not unprecedented, according to Ralph Collier, president of the Shark Research Committee in Canoga Park, California, and director of the Global Shark Attack File in Princeton, New Jersey. He said he had spoken to a woman who was kayaking off Catalina Island, California, in 2008 when a shark slammed her kayak from underneath and sent her flying into the air. She then landed on the back of the shark, Collier said. “At that point the shark started to swim out to sea, so she jumped off its back,” Collier said. US Coast Guard Lieutenant JG Zach Vojtech said officials did not officially log shark encounters, but he had learned about Niblack’s ordeal from an off-duty member who was nearby when he was knocked from his board. Jake Marks, the Coast Guard member, said he never saw the shark, but witnessed Niblack suddenly standing up, with water churning around him. He said he joined Niblack in paddling as fast as he could for shore after seeing a large shape swimming between them just beneath the surface. “I have no reason to doubt there was a shark out there,” said Marks. “With the damage to his board, the way he was yelling and trembling afterwards – there is no other explanation for that.” Niblack thinks he was standing on the shark for no more than three or four seconds when the shark went out from beneath him. The dorsal fin caught his board and dragged him for about a metre by his ankle tether. “I’m just screaming bloody murder,” he said. “I’m just yelling: ‘Shark!’ I thought for sure I was gone.” In six years of surfing, Niblack said he had seen sharks in the water, but never so close. He said he had been dreaming about sharks, but was planning to go back out to surf. When he does he will take a waterproof video camera his roommate gave him. He has also put a sticker on the bottom of his board to ward off sharks – a shark with a red circle and a slash over it. “I’ll definitely go back out,” he said. “It’s just the surf sucks right now. I’ll wait until that gets better, then go back out.” Wildlife Surfing United States guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Erin Burnett, CNN’s new talking head, is incorporating a segment into her new show entitled “Strike Force,” where a bunch of business types with whom Burnett is quite comfortable come on and answer really, really tough questions regarding our bad economy and what they will do about it. 20 CEOs, investors and entrepreneurs that I picked to answer the tough questions about the economy this election season. I’m sure they’ll speak from the heart and get to the root causes of why we’re in this situation and how we can get out of it. Burnett is right that Americans on the left and the right are angry at Washington; but we’re fundamentally different in our view of governance. As for hating the bailout of the banks, liberals are angry for different reasons than conservatives. Many of us believed that there was a big problem in the global financial markets, but as my interview with Naomi Klein revealed , we wanted Obama to come up with his own bailout plan which would include tough measures installed so that Milton Friedman disaster capitalism would not keep hold on our economy. We wanted accountability and hearings to get to the root causes of the crisis, prosecutions when necessary and reform Wall Street regulations so that banks and the financial sector could no longer destroy the world with greed. Once Glass Steagall was destroyed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act , (Wikipedia is being hacked on this issue ) banks were able to start gambling away our money and grow too big to fail. Back in the old days of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life , bankers were portrayed as the enemy of the common man. Scheming executives found loopholes to steal farms and homes away from families. After the Great Depression, regulations placed in by the government caused banks to lose some of their power and they weren’t scorned nearly as often. Burnett proclaims on her show quite loudly that banks are the good guys in all of this because they employ so many people and we need them to create jobs so we should root for them. I guess she forgot all the corruption during the foreclosure frauds banks carried out. Burnett: Well, Wall Street protests are growing. New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Albuquerque — you’re looking at shots of all of them now. There is something here reminiscent of the early days of the Tea Party, which actually shares some things in common with the Wall Street occupiers. They’re both grassroots organizations, from the ground up. They’re both angry at Washington. And while most participants are sincere, there is hate in both groups. Most important, while they’re on opposite sides of American politics, they agree on something huge. They both hate the bailout of the banks and share animosity to the banks in general, which we think is a sign of a real issue because banks should be great for America, never mind what we do without ATMs and places to store our money. Banks mean jobs. Banks in America–and there are more than 7,000 of them–employ almost 1.8 million Americans, more than America’s largest private employer, Walmart. Banks employ so many people that one bank’s lay-off can skew the jobs report for the entire nation. I’m talking about Bank of America, which laid off 30,000 employees in September, almost a third of the nation’s total planned job cuts for the month, so we should be rooting for the banks. The problem is they make it really hard when they lash out at Washington’s new rules by slapping fees on consumers. And I mean there is a tsunami of fees. Citibank hiking fees today again, set to charge $20 a month for accounts between six and $15,000. Bank of America and Sun Trust, $5 debit card fees, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo testing $3 debit card fees. Well, I asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about this last night. [Geithner quotes] BURNETT: The banks say Washington reforms have hurt them so much that the fees are the only way to make money. But that is not true. Take Bank of America. They are planning to put a $5 monthly fee on debit cards. And analysts who ran the numbers today for us tell us they will make 13 percent more money on that than they did before the regulations and that’s just debit fees. Bank of America is also launching $9 monthly fees on some checking accounts. Wow. In this particular point she is correct: Fees are ridiculous. Good for her. In response to her, Strike Force guest City National CEO Russell Goldsmith says he won’t raise his bank’s fees like BofA so please, love him . However, he’s very upset at Durbin’s law, which limits the fees consumers pay to banks for nothing at all , which Citi employed as much as Bank of America. Good thing he had plenty of airtime to bitch and moan about it. And what’s his solution to make Americans feel better? BURNETT: And what can the banks do, in general? Because I mean we’re looking at the fees here specifically, which I have a real issue with because they’re saying they just make up what they’re, you know, what they’re losing on the regulation and clearly when you look at the numbers, at least in the case we gave specifically, it doesn’t appear to be the case at all, but on top of that you have just in general it feels like an animosity and a tone-deaf nature especially when you’re looking around the country at people who are frustrated and angry at the banks. What should your industry do right now? Is this a time where you should have all of the big bank CEOs stand up and talk to the protesters or do something to say we’re patriotic and want to bill this country, too? GOLDSMITH: Well, I think you know I’m here talking to you, trying to explain that at City National we’re not doing what some of these big guys are doing. Unfortunately this inappropriate law, this price fixing got passed in the middle of the night. There are no facts and nobody knows what the facts are, and the banks obviously can’t sit down as a group and agree on pricing. Wow, the ego on this guy. When she asked how he could act patriotically, he basically said that “I appeared on your show, Erin. Doesn’t that count?” And he wonders why there’s so much anger directed at these banks and their suits. What a jackass.
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PCC’s new chairman is Conservative peer, and former MP, with experience in regulatory affairs Lord Hunt of Wirral, who served in government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has been named as the next chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The 69-year-old Conservative peer and former MP will take over from Baroness Buscombe on 17 October. Hunt is also a lawyer specialising in regulatory affairs, with political links and specialist expertise deemed attractive for the £170,000 a year job. Lord Hunt signalled that his chairmanship would not just amount to business as usual. He said that he hoped to lead “wholesale regeneration and renewal of the system of independent self-regulation of the press”. Critics have argued that the PCC is a better mediator rather than an effective regulator. He added: “There is a real appetite for change, however, and it is my intention to drive forward the creation of a reinvigorated and respected standards body, funded by the industry but operationally independent from both the industry and the state.” Interviews were held by the Press Standards Board of Finance, which is chaired by Lord Black of Brentwood, the former spokesman for Michael Howard when he was leader of the Conservative party – who now works for the publishers of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. Lord Black said: “David Hunt’s wide-ranging experience in politics, in the law and in regulation and above all his unshakeable commitment to the principles of press freedom and self-regulation make him the ideal person to lead the process of renewal and regeneration which is now essential.” David Hunt was a member of the Thatcher and Major cabinets for five years from 1990, as Welsh secretary, then employment secretary and finally chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, where he co-ordinated government policy. He stepped down in 1995 and lost his Wirral West seat in 1997. He rejoined the Conservative front bench to shadow Lord Mandelson in the upper house, but did not get a government appointment when the coalition was formed, and returned to legal practice. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Press Complaints Commission Newspapers & magazines Press freedom National newspapers Newspapers Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …PCC’s new chairman is Conservative peer, and former MP, with experience in regulatory affairs Lord Hunt of Wirral, who served in government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has been named as the next chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The 69-year-old Conservative peer and former MP will take over from Baroness Buscombe on 17 October. Hunt is also a lawyer specialising in regulatory affairs, with political links and specialist expertise deemed attractive for the £170,000 a year job. Lord Hunt signalled that his chairmanship would not just amount to business as usual. He said that he hoped to lead “wholesale regeneration and renewal of the system of independent self-regulation of the press”. Critics have argued that the PCC is a better mediator rather than an effective regulator. He added: “There is a real appetite for change, however, and it is my intention to drive forward the creation of a reinvigorated and respected standards body, funded by the industry but operationally independent from both the industry and the state.” Interviews were held by the Press Standards Board of Finance, which is chaired by Lord Black of Brentwood, the former spokesman for Michael Howard when he was leader of the Conservative party – who now works for the publishers of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. Lord Black said: “David Hunt’s wide-ranging experience in politics, in the law and in regulation and above all his unshakeable commitment to the principles of press freedom and self-regulation make him the ideal person to lead the process of renewal and regeneration which is now essential.” David Hunt was a member of the Thatcher and Major cabinets for five years from 1990, as Welsh secretary, then employment secretary and finally chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, where he co-ordinated government policy. He stepped down in 1995 and lost his Wirral West seat in 1997. He rejoined the Conservative front bench to shadow Lord Mandelson in the upper house, but did not get a government appointment when the coalition was formed, and returned to legal practice. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Press Complaints Commission Newspapers & magazines Press freedom National newspapers Newspapers Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …PCC’s new chairman is Conservative peer, and former MP, with experience in regulatory affairs Lord Hunt of Wirral, who served in government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has been named as the next chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The 69-year-old Conservative peer and former MP will take over from Baroness Buscombe on 17 October. Hunt is also a lawyer specialising in regulatory affairs, with political links and specialist expertise deemed attractive for the £170,000 a year job. Lord Hunt signalled that his chairmanship would not just amount to business as usual. He said that he hoped to lead “wholesale regeneration and renewal of the system of independent self-regulation of the press”. Critics have argued that the PCC is a better mediator rather than an effective regulator. He added: “There is a real appetite for change, however, and it is my intention to drive forward the creation of a reinvigorated and respected standards body, funded by the industry but operationally independent from both the industry and the state.” Interviews were held by the Press Standards Board of Finance, which is chaired by Lord Black of Brentwood, the former spokesman for Michael Howard when he was leader of the Conservative party – who now works for the publishers of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. Lord Black said: “David Hunt’s wide-ranging experience in politics, in the law and in regulation and above all his unshakeable commitment to the principles of press freedom and self-regulation make him the ideal person to lead the process of renewal and regeneration which is now essential.” David Hunt was a member of the Thatcher and Major cabinets for five years from 1990, as Welsh secretary, then employment secretary and finally chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, where he co-ordinated government policy. He stepped down in 1995 and lost his Wirral West seat in 1997. He rejoined the Conservative front bench to shadow Lord Mandelson in the upper house, but did not get a government appointment when the coalition was formed, and returned to legal practice. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Press Complaints Commission Newspapers & magazines Press freedom National newspapers Newspapers Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
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