Britain has a Russia problem. And his name is Nigel Farage.
Today, Ofcom finally banned RT. 8 long years after Russia illegally invaded Crimea.
But this is their man. RT - whose editor described it as a "weapon" of the Russian state - is what made Farage into who is today. 1/
RT is not just a TV channel. It's at centre of a whole ecosystem of Kremlin propaganda. Clips uploaded to YouTube were laced between mesmerising videos of tsunamis & tornadoes.
It was clickbait wizardry.
As ex-YouTuber @gchaslot told me no-one milked YouTube's algo like RT. 2/
And who was RT's favourite man in the West?
This man. It's not just that Farage was paid by RT - the Russian state - for appearances over years. Though he was.
It's that RT - the biggest news channel on YouTube - made him a star. 3/
RT cultivated UKIP from at least 2011. First Gerard Batten. And then Farage. He was paid £2k an appearance, I was told.
And as @benimmo explained in our 2018 @ObserverUK investigation. The Kremlin was always explicit. RT was as essential as the Ministry of Defence 4/
In 2018, I had weird eye-popping experience of how this all worked.
I went to 'An Entertaining evening with Nigel Farage' in Melbourne. And discovered an audience of almost entirely young men.
Jordan Peterson fans!🤯
Who'd found Farage via YouTube's 'Up Next' algo 4/
RT was central to Farage's entire media game. His set appearances in EU parliament were clipped, uploaded & amplified by the most powerful algo on YouTube.
It all got fed into the Kremlin's propaganda machine. 5/
The pro-Putin far-right parties of the EU parliament are central to so much of the Kremlin's influence across Europe.
And here's the EU staffer who used to upload Farage's videos to YouTube. "A frequent visitor to the Russian embassy." 6/
What's more, emails revealed that same EU staffer who @guardian had shown linked to Russian embassy was using Farage clips to fuel an entire fake news ecosystem.
Mr Farage's spokesman responded to this claim: "Mr Farage has no desire to talk to you under any circumstances" 😂
"All this is out in the open." That's what we said in our 2018 @observerUK investigation.
The Russian govt made its intentions clear. And the UK govt sat back & watched it.
Why? Because Britain has a Russia problem. And its name is Nigel Farage.
Postscript: Where is BBC in this? A good question. And a whole other thread.
But here’s one of those famously ‘forensic’ interviews. From 2019, 2 years after reported FBI investigating Trump-Russia ties. His pro-Kremlin voting record never ever discussed
And here's Margarita Simonyan. RT's editor in chief at today's Putin rally in Moscow.
She's the one who called RT "a weapon" in Russia's information war.
A war she brought to the West. With the UK govt's consent & approval,
The targeting & killing of journalists in Gaza & the failure of the media to show collective solidarity & to take collective action is…incomprehensible.
I feel a such profound sense of shame & failure. It’s not just the death of journalists. It’s the death of journalism. 1/
This is Mariam Abu Daka, one of 3 journalists killed in latest strike, warning that journalists are being deliberately targeted & killed.
‘The Israeli occupation targets journalists because they tell the truth’
She calls for urgent international protection. It did not come. 2/
It is not that there has not been efforts to mobilise a collective response by press freedom orgs, including @RSF_inter, but there has also been silence , denial & cowardice from the prestige legacy outlets.
There’s a reason trust in all media is plummeting.
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Nick Clegg made a reported £100m from Facebook. And now the reputation laundering begins.
Congrats to him on this magnificent PR coup. Nicely played, Clegg. A glossy magazine profile AND extract in the paper that created the Facebook PR crisis that led to his hiring.
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It’s an abject reminder of how mainstream outlets are played by Silicon Valley, by the cosy rules of access journalism & the genre framing of the celeb interview.
Clegg never submitted to a proper interview in his time at Facebook & now gets to spin & whitewash & conceal all while still under a FB NDA.
2/
I understand why this was commissioned. The need for a culturally relevant ‘name’. The fact that many people will ‘hate-read’ it. It will get traffic.
But it also reinforces an impression that so many people have that the media is broken. Clicks & traffic & holding power to account are such competing incentives.
3/
Earlier this year, I lost my beloved job at my beloved Observer when the Guardian, in its great wisdom, gave the newspaper away to a podcast company...who promptly sacked me.
So, forgive my delight today, in being nominated for FIVE awards in the British Podcast Awards!! 1/
Huge kudos to super producers @RuthAbrahams5 of Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring & @GeorgiaJCatt & @ByrnesyGsy for Stalked.
Plus the brilliant & brave Hannah Mossman-Moore & Sergei Cristo 👏 👏 👏. Both FEARLESS in completely different ways.
But mostly, thanks for listening... & in Sergei's case for crowdfunding it. Incredible to be nominated alongside all the big companies for our indie DIY affair. Thanks also to @peterjukes for galvanising & dramaturgy.
And to BBC Sounds for being so punchy in naming Hannah's stalker
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BUT it upheld 2/3 points inc that foreign interference (inc disinfo) *is* a threat to fair elections (which UK had denied!)
Lawyers say hugely significant judgement with far-reaching consequences. AND that an appeal should be considered
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Here's the meat of the judgement. The court upheld the first two points. It only refused the third and final point.
The legal team said they were amazed by how far the court had gone in upholding the bulk of their arguments, and that the ruling opens the door to many other potential cases.
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The court agreed there were 'shortcomings in the Government's initial response'.
But it bought the UK's defence that a) it had already investigated foreign interference and b) it has put in place new legislative protections since. 4/
Today, the Observer ‘transfers’ to Tortoise Media, a process that involved neither journalists nor readers.
This is 100+ journalists being ‘banged out’ of the Guardian offices, an old Fleet Street custom that’s usually a jolly occasion. This felt more like a medieval damnation.
Journalism is a team sport. And that’s it. The entire @ObsNewReview editorial team is gone! Female-led, female dominated, the entire commissioning team, art director, production staff & photo editor.
My journalistic home for 20 years…totally destroyed.
See the embedded thread. I don’t even think the Guardian management & board have any idea of what they’ve lost.
NEW: My piece for the Observer on how I was so deep into my investigation into Cambridge Analytica that I failed to realise that Hannah - my ex's daughter - was facing a human version of it: a stalker who was harvesting her data and weaponising it against her. 1/ theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…
I write about how I finally realised the scale of what was happening to Hannah, how comprehensively the police had failed her & how another woman, from the same class as her at the same school had also had a stalker, Alice Ruggles. Her stalker had murdered her. 2/
Hannah had 9 different characters harassing her, including 'Premium Escorts' purporting to sell her services & folders of evidence. I was overwhelmed by my own trials but I landed on the idea of emailing Georgia Catt, the brilliant producer of a podcast series I'd loved, The Missing Cryptoqueen
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