[Music] Independent journalism has never been more important. See the value of prospects writing for yourself with a 1 month free trial. Get unlimited access to our online articles, our app and subscriber only newsletters. Plus a free limited edition tote bag. Terms and conditions apply to start your free trial, visit prospectmagazine.co.uk/1monthfree. That's one as a number month free. [Music] [Music] Welcome to Media Competition with me Alan Rusperger. And me, Lionel Barben. Each week we dissect the biggest stories in journalism and media. And I'm just back from Madrid Lionel Word, did you spend the bank holiday weekend? In the sorry hills, got on my bike. Very good. Middle-aged man in Lycra again. I feel fear. I was in Madrid to celebrate the 50th birthday of El País Spain's leading paper, which is a curious paper because it is successful. It's making money. But its parent company Priza is burdened by 700 million euros or pounds in debt. Every year, El País begins the year by having to pay off enormous debt amounting, which means that it is always struggling. But it's a great newspaper and I did a Q&A with Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post. We were in 2013. We were Fiesta Rivals on the Snowden story. We both shared a Pulitzer Prize the following year. And now we're not rivals but friends. But it was a good occasion. We also thought that the best correspondence in Brussels really top notch. Independent paper. Really great paper. Lots going on. I think we should begin by risking a legal action. It's not long-term as we've done that. Well, I'm just sitting a little bit more stiffly in my chair. So now you've started. Why don't you begin? Well, I want to discuss the coverage of Nigel Farage. And the money he has been getting from crypto billionaires. It's obvious that he is very uncomfortable about this coverage. And we will come onto Christopher Harborn, who is one of the crypto billionaires, because that's a long, twisty and tangled story. But there's another one called Ben Dilo, who is another crypto billionaire. Are you familiar with him? Yes, but not met him. So this guy, Bilo, who's been living in Hong Kong, has pledged four million pounds to Nigel Farage. And enterprising hacks and people on social media have been looking into his background, as we should, because he's going to become a very, very substantial donor to someone who fancies himself as our next prime minister. And they turned up an interesting fact. And here is where we're about to risk the wrath of his lawyers, Adel Shor Goddard, because we're going to refer to the fact that he pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act, because he had failed to implement adequate money laundering controls at his cryptocurrency firm. He was fined 7.3 million. He was given 30 months probation. The prosecutors described him as the leader of a criminal enterprise. This is Nigel Farage's donor. The judge said that the crimes were very serious. He had summed his nose at the law. And there was an even declaim that he had told Iranians that he could trade with his company, even though that could break sanctions. So there's an interesting story. And can you see anything wrong with talking about that, Lano? No, I think this is a matter of public record. And I'd certainly be happy to appear in the witness box as a character witness, saying that you are a man of great integrity, just reporting the facts, Alan. And that's very kind of an idea. But I would add a little bit of context to just to make nice with Adel Shor Goddard. And Mr. D.L. because you might say one that this was an action brought during the Biden administration. And there is a very different approach being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission against these kind of cases. And let's say as well that there's been a very large amount of lenience shown towards crypto trading, not least because the members of the Trump family, I'm treading carefully here, are involved themselves in the crypto business. So how about that? This is Nigel Farage. Yes. That's a very good defense, Lano, and I applaud your fair mindedness. But I'm afraid that lawyers acting for Mr. D.L. do not agree with me. They agree with you. And there's a guy on Twitter called James Wilson, who received a very fierce letter from Adel Shor Goddard on April the 10th saying that all this is private. What? Yeah, it's private. And there's no public interest in us discussing it. There is former Mr. Wilson, they said there's no journalist's exemption to you because you're not a journalist. But anyway, there's no public interest in doing this. And they quote the Supreme Court from 2000 and sign saying as the company, they don't come to his rescue like you tried to do by saying, well, this was Biden. They just say as a conviction recedes into the past, it becomes a part of the person's private life. He may have been dodgy in 2022, but here we are four years later. It's receded into the past and you're not allowed to talk about it. But brackets, he was later popular. Well, I was going to point that out. That was my Trump card, Alan. Very good, very good. He was indeed pardoned. So I think that does bear some weight. But I mean, it's fairly recent past Alan that he was convicted. It's certainly it's only four years ago. And anyway, he has received friendly coverage in the daily telegraph and more of that in a minute with our other witness, Christopher Harborn. And he was given a very soft interview in December last year, which did reveal in passing that he had received this sentence on a huge fine of £7 million. But he described it as a quote, "a spurious blip running a startup." And the telegraph in soft soap prose said the 41-year-old has channeled. He's had questions about whether he has a spurtious syndrome into quotes a pursuit of the truth that he sees as being under attack from political correctness. And he's also funded Toby Young's free speech union. So it's all okay. We don't need to go into the messy details for his past. But this pattern of, I mean, to me, that's a complete slap action. It's just trying to prevent discussion about this guy's criminal past, even though he was pardoned. It's a fact, open to democracy for sale. Peter Gagin's excellent blog, as if you're interested, published the full account of the trial and what he was up to. And the notion that people on X or journalists should not be allowed to write about where Farage's money comes from seems to me absolutely astonishing. There, I've said it. And if at all you've got our want to come for me, that's great. You know what I find me. Well, I agree, Alan, because it does point to a much broader and very important story, which commentators such as Fraser Nelson, particularly now columnist for the Times, formally the editor of the spectator, has pointed to a wall of crypto money entering British politics, largely through to reform UK Nigel Farage's populist insurgent party. This is a new phenomenon. Never mind the fact that some of it has come from someone convicted of financial crime. But also from this man, we've not really heard of Christopher Harbourn based in Thailand, but I would salute the former Financial Times investigative reporter, Africa correspondent Tom Burgess, now at the Guardian, who wrote a really path-breaking piece on Christopher Harbourn who he is, and of course the fact that he sent five million pounds, five million pounds, Alan, just to guarantee the personal security of Nigel Farage. Supposedly, I mean, this story is even more murky because you're right that he, it transpired that he'd given five million pounds to Nigel Farage just before he declared that he was going to be an MP. That's on top of 12 million pounds he had given previously and 10 million pounds he'd given to Nigel Farage's Brexit party. So he is giving staggering amounts of money to get Nigel Farage into power. And you remember just before Nigel Farage declared he was a MP.
going to be a candidate. He declared that he definitely wasn't going to be a candidate. On 23rd of May, he said, "I won't stand." June 3rd, he said, "I will stand." So this question of when the money the 5 million pounds was given to Farage, because Farage is saying, "Well, I don't need to declare it because I was a private citizen there," is highly pertinent. But there's something very twisty about the way that Farage has handled this, because the Guardian's anisek got hold of this story. And she did what any good journalists would do, which is she wrote to Harborn and Farage and said, "Have you got any comment on this?" And she got letters back from lawyers, a bit of a pattern coming here saying, "We have no comment at the moment, but in any case, you need to give us time." And there were legal letters that had given us more time, shillings used by celebrities who were in trouble refused to respond unless the Guardian gave information about their sources and again asked for more time. Well, it turned out why they needed more time. It was because they went to the Daily Telegraph, friend of CryptocurrencyBitioners, and the Telegraph said, "Thank you very much. We'll do a nice big soft-saupe interview with you and we'll scoop the Guardian on this story." "Scold Dungry." "Scold Dungry, yeah." And so the Telegraph duly came out with a big story. Farage said he was talking with the Telegraph quotes because someone has got hold of material about my private finances, which is outrageous. So he calls them private finances, and it was a very sympathetic Telegraph, one might almost call it unskeptical, because it absolutely swallowed Farage's story that he needed this money for his security because he had been firebombed. But in fact, it turned out that he was firebombed after receiving the gift of the money. And he claims there was an incendiary device in his house. Now, Fraser Nelson has written an excellent piece about all this in the Times, and Nelson says, "There's a fine line between political generosity and corruption because people who give money generally want something in return, and the British way of handling this has been total transparency and disclosure." Farage is saying, "Oh, that doesn't apply to me because this money came to me as a private citizen, and it was what he calls a personal gift." And he said, "I don't need to talk about it, though opposition parties are saying, "Ah, actually, there's a law saying that any money you get within a year of Stanley F. Parliament should be declared. It's extremely murky." Well, first of all, the Conservative Party of rightly referred Nigel Farage to the Common Standards Committee because of that provision that you've just identified about receiving money in the time frame when you're going to stand for Parliament. Again, I'm going to try to play character witness for Nigel Farage, but we did know this is a new lovel. No, it is, but I'm just trying to save you from being blistered by the lawyers, Alan, by the legal legals. I mean, it's very hard for me to do, but I will, because we did go to the same school, Nigel Farage and myself. We just didn't have the same teachers. They're all in it together, you see. It's just what we're already suspected. We're crookedly running Britain. Well, I think we'll you go ahead. And I think more much of a crookedly. Well, I was going to use the difficult word beginning with C. Don't get it too excited. It's called cricket. And Nigel Farage and I also share a great interest in cricket. But Alan, this is getting a bit chummy for my legs. But now I'm with you. This is deeply questionable. Not least, because there is a huge debate about how cryptocurrency should be regulated or not. And if you're in the pocket, oops, better be careful there. That's a cricket metaphor. If you're receiving lots of money, large amounts of cash from crypto and then carrying water for them, saying actually, we don't want any regulation. These people have fine. That's the same thing, Alan, that's been going on in the United States under the Trump administration. Trump was a great skeptic of crypto when out of office between 2020 and 2024. Now he's he's got crypto money coming out of his ears. He's entertaining crypto kings and queens in Mar-a-Lago. And it's now all this is coming to Britain. Second parallel, these are, as you say, very large sums of money. And they're coming from overseas. This is destabilizing for our democracy. Very worrying indeed. I would urge all scoop blue bottle reporters to carry on following the money because there's a huge amount there. The whole thing absolutely stinks. And again, if Adolf Schor got out, wanted to come to me for saying that, they can. I want to read two paragraphs of Fraser Nilsis Excellent piece. Harbond says he wants nothing in return for his donations, perhaps. But it just so happens that for our proposes a new quotes big bang that could add tens of billions to crypto companies' market values. A reform government would order HM Treasury to stop work on its own digital currency apparatus, which could threaten the current crypto elite. The Bank of England this day would be held to hold Bitcoin, elevating it from a cowboy currency to a UK approved official asset class. Tax on crypto trades and only crypto trades would be cut from 24 to 10%. All this would greatly help Tether. That's Harbond's company. He's got 12% in it. Ferrari says the company is worth 500 billion. If he's right, then Harbond could afford to give away five million pounds a day each day for the next two years and barely eat into one percent of his fortune by the standards of UK politics. Harbond's donations are enormous. No living man has ever given as much to a party. Two thirds of all the money reform spends is wired from Thailand, but in a crypto world it's a bar tip. I mean, this is a staggering story and I think it's dismaying. The not more is being written about it and the telegraph in particular is giving these crypto billionaires such a soft run. Agree, 100% follow the money. Follow the money. That's what you always did in your career. While we wait for the rich to arrive, what else has been happening, Lernel? Well, I was very interested in this story out of America with Julie K. Brown, who was the great investigative reporter who broke the Epstein scandal. That story uncovered the sweet heart deal between the then attorney general in Florida and Epstein, where he basically got off lightly, got 10 months for trafficking offense with a minor and was released with a tag after barely a year or so she then followed that. I broke the whole story so she's literally top draw reporting. She's just announced along with several other reporters from the McClatchee chain, which I'll come to in a minute, saying that she's removing her byline from artificial intelligence generated stories, AI generated stories. So this is where, for example, one of her long stories could be summarized or put with extra material added through AI. She doesn't want her name attached to that kind of artificial content. And it's it's AI generated content. She says, I cover stories that should never be repackaged or altered in any way, whether the story is about sexual abuse or immigrants caged at alligator alcatraz. Our journalists take great care to ensure that their material is accurate fair and conveys invaluable aspects of humanity that AI simply cannot do. Now interestingly, McClatchee went to receive a ship chapter 11 and then was repurchased by a hedge fund and they're now trying to generate extra revenue and subscriptions through AI generated content. So they're saying we need more output. That's what the editor-in-chief says. And this is crucial to our new business model. But the journalists are saying no. We want authentic our name under authentic content. So it's a real tension and speaks to the dilemmas of the new age in media. And we're on the side of Julie K. Brown at that. It's hard not to be if you have a great reporter like that.
She has the record, she has the reputation, and I think she's right. I think she's right too. And this is going to be the first of very early shots in what's going to be a war that is going to go on for many, many years. Let's take a break for some adverts and after the break, we'll be talking about Pulitzer Prizes. Hi, I'm Benjamin Clark and I'm the editor of Prospect's Free Daily Newsletter Lightbowl. Every weekday I bring you a curated collection of our top articles. From politics, law and assisted dying to the media, culture and our renowned lives columns, there's something in the newsletter for everyone. I'll guide you through the most important issues of the day, plus I'll lighten things up with some not so serious tangents. Sign up for free today at Prospect Magazine.co.uk/lightbowl. Welcome back to Media Confidential. Helen Pulitzer Prizes, what's this about? As a former Pulitzer Prize co-winner, what do you have to say about this story? It's interesting that the Washington Post won the main prize for public interest journalism, which was the one that the Guardian and the Washington Post shared in 2014. And I think that will come as a bit of a shot in the arm to a newsroom that is very, very demoralized after the savage cuts that were imposed. What was the story? It was for their coverage of Trump in general, and in a world on them in the week in which Jeff Fezos gave how much for the Met Gala $10 million to subsidize a Met Gala. There's a real backlash of Alan, there's a fashion maven. I would say watch this story. $10 million I think would have come in very handy in the Washington Post newsroom. They must be thinking and it's maybe connected with people like Merrill Streep saying well then they're not going to go to the Met Gala and many other people if Jeff Fezos is going to be the lead sponsor of it. But anyway, Washington Post got a Pulitzer and well done them. I should say in brackets that the Pulitzer ceremony is very, very unlike. Press award ceremonies in Britain, which I think are a bit better than they were in a heyday. No throwing bread at the Pulitzer ceremony. No one gets drunk. Nobody throws bread. There are no tables gearing it. Other newspapers, there's no one punching anyone as has happened at press awards. There's none of this sort of commercial sponsorship where you know the report of the year is sponsored by BP or whoever on the net West Bank. The commercial manager for the net West Bank then comes up and none of that. It's a very civilized lunchtime ceremony at Columbia University. And do attention is paid to what the work has been recognised for, which sometimes these sort of Gala dinners which you have to pay a normal amount for and a lot of drink is consumed. The reason somebody has won a prize is sometimes you know sketched over. Anyway, enough about the Pulitzer prizes. Barry Weiss and CBS. This is again something to keep watching Alan. The veteran 60 minutes correspondent Sharon Alfonso who did that documentary on the C-Cott gang prison in El Salvador, the biggest, the meanest prison in the world. Or some would say that documentary was held by Barry Weiss because she thought some more reporting was needed. Well now Sharon Alfonso is spoken up complaining about quote the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear at CBS news. And her uncertainty about whether she will keep her job after pushing back against the decision to hold her documentary was by the way actually eventually shown broadcast on CBS news. I would say making these comments probably I wouldn't put a long bet on Miss Alfonso staying at CBS news. Meanwhile the ratings for the evening broadcast I think are Tonking but Barry Weiss is still there making some interesting hires recently. But I heard on the great vine that there is a feeling that she needs a bit more help in the direction of the news programs. So watch this space needs a bit of support. Absolutely I think that's another story that's going to run and run. Just touch on a story about the nerve which you know listeners may remember was the publication launch six months ago by five former observer journalists including Carol Cadd Wallerder probably the best known one as just an answer is hiring four more journalists to investigative journalists to columnist which indicates that they seem to be doing quite well with the reader support they've got. And one notable departure from the observer which has launched a redundancy a voluntary redundancy program Alexi Maustros who was from tortoise was one of their leading investor, Jonas has decided he's going to go off and write a novel. Have you ever written a novel? No, I have an ambition to write novel. No, I can't do dialogue. Have you gotten it? Keep it brief. Okay, we want an email from Adam, there Alan De Laano as an ex-hack who trained in the 70s and early 80s when accuracy was drilled into training reports. I was staggered by Donick Ponce's investigation into AI experts. That's the one we talked about recently where Ponce and his team at Prescazette had discovered more than a thousand AI experts who were being quoted. What seems to happen is that PR companies dream up these experts and then pardon them off on over-pressed reporters and they get into print. And Adam continues it accords to me that if Ipso requires a complaint or complaints in order to investigate perhaps podcast listeners could complain about these fictitious AI experts as an issue of accuracy referring to the Donick Ponce episode of your podcast and the file he has lodged with Ipso as evidence supporting the complaint. I see from Ipso website that quotes anyone quotes can raise a complaint if it relates to accuracy just the thought all the best Adam. Are we going to join Adam in urging our listeners to get in touch with it? Well, I think it's a good idea Alan and on the public interest side, but I am concerned about one thing because you're in danger of turning this podcast into an insurgency. Because only a few weeks ago you were encouraging our listeners out base or listeners to spend some of their time complaining to off-com about GB news. So you're going to turn the whole audience into a group of complainers. This strikes me as unduly negative. I think complainers is a very loaded word. I prefer the word active citizens. They are active watchdogs and I I utterly back Adams call anybody who was outraged by listening to this stream of fiction masquerading as journalism while Ipso sits there ringing its hands and saying there's nothing we can do. I think it would be good to put a little pressure on Ipso and brackets on off-com. Yeah, I withdraw my remarks. I fall into line. I think it is to be serious a definite subject for complaint and Ipso needs to get off its beep. Right, final final final thing, because I wrote my column for the independent and prospect about this last week. I don't know if you followed this incident that happened or rather didn't happen earlier in April where it was claimed that a young woman in Epsom had been gang raped outside of Methodist church in the early hours. This was whipped up in the modern way of things and we talked about this on the podcast into a frothing rage by people associated with Tommy Robertson with Tommy Robertson by Tommy Robertson by the ghastly Dan Witten who was the face of the poor marshals, GP News, but then got sacked and there's now got his own channel by talk TV. It's demanding to know the identity race religion of these gang rapists and it got very, very ugly with an associate of Tommy Robertson broadcasting protests on the streets of Epsom. A lot of protesters turned up and they at one point broke into a hotel where they suspected migrants could be housed, brackets they weren't. And the poor old sorry police, it took them nine days to come out with a statement saying that actually there had been no rape. There had been no offense and they said that this woman had banged her head coming out of the nightclub and was confused and it took them nine days to look at all the CCTV and look at all the evidence and appeal for witnesses and make house to house inquiries to try and verify what she initially told them. And the dismaying thing about this was that it eventually ended up with.
an article in the spectator by Brendan O'Neill, who was a sort of a gantfly libertarian, and also with Robert Generick, who was a former Secretary of State for Justice. Again, putting pressure on the sorry police, Brendan O'Neill's piece was, "Well, we know why they're not telling us. We all know why we're not being told the truth about this." And I fear this is that the shape of the future that went wrong like this happened. And the police are now being bracketed, along with journalists and NGOs and lawyers as sort of part of the corrupt woke establishment. And it's difficult to know how sorry police could have played things differently. But it was dismaying to see something that starts as being geared up by far right racists. Seeping into magazines like the spectator and inching in to outfits like G.B. News and talk to V. I don't know if you've got any thoughts about that, Lala, but it was a sort of really uncomfortable column to write. Well, I think it's a very important column, Alan, because what you're seeing is collective rush to judgment, then fused with attempts to identify perpetrators by race and religion, forcing the police to identify them in public before they've been charged, before the process of in this case, where the police hadn't even finished an investigation of the facts. And so we know about contempt of court. We've got to enforce the law, but we also need to encourage news organizations, especially those mainstream ones that have reputations, not to rush to judgment, to actually exercise restraint. But in this media environment that we now live in, where everybody's one click away from making a serious allegation about inflaming the situation, it's very difficult. So yeah, I do sound a little like private I used to call him the Reverend JC Flannel, but I think the Reverend JC Flannel needs to be listened to, because what you've described, Alan, in your column, is deeply corrosive. I tell you what was really horrible, was that the sorry police fielded at one point, and this again is a sort of break with the old world in the old world. They would have had a press conference and there would have been journalists there who would have asked tough questions, of course, as they should, but it would have been done on reasonable terms. Now because the populists have planted the idea that journalists are not to be trusted, they're basically lying like the police are lying. The sorry police fielded a female police detective who came out with a make of her to try and address the crowd and trying to use very careful language because it was in the middle of an investigation. And she was bayed down, she was just shouted down with vile swear words being flung in her face. And she after a while she just retreated. I mean, it was a disgusting thing to watch. And the really appalling Dan Whitten, who as I say was once the public face of support marshals, GB News, siding with the rioters and sneering at this woman and implying, and this was after the police had come out and said, actually nothing had happened. His whole tone was to indicate that the police were lying and that the mob were right. It's a very, very ugly development. And I mean, thankfully in this story, most of the mainstream media didn't join in the baiting and the mob pursued of this story. But it was uncomfortable to see the spectator running Brendan O'Neill's piece. I just I thought, why, what's to be gained? Why don't you leave the police a few days to do their enquiries? You know, the spectator of all papers should be in favor of due process. That's it for the week. That's all from us at Media Confidential. We're going to be back on Monday in the meantime. Please follow Adam in sending us media questions. You can send to via email at
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