🚨 Here's CNN absolutely schooling the British media on how to cover the jailing of climate activists. "Climate protesters are taking action against Big Oil. UK courts are handing them prison terms akin to rapists and thieves"
The sentences are believed to be the longest in the UK’s history for non-violent protest and were delivered under two new controversial laws that supercharged policing powers.
Reminded of this article from September 2023. 'Given lowest possible transparency rating in openDemocracy’s ‘Who Funds You?’ project earlier this year – investigation by this website in 2022 found the think tank had taken cash from US oil giant ExxonMobil.' www.opendemocracy.net/en/policy-ex...
Claire Coutinho was senior fellow at Policy Exchange, which drafted law to crack down on XR and other climate activists
That is journalism! Informative and provocative. It would seem John Woodcock acts in the interests of those industries that pay him as an advisor. Certainly the UK looks awful with policing, courts and sentencing, and lawmaking driven by vague but traceable donors. Starmer - bring daylight please.
*I should of course note that CNN tends to cover foreign human rights abuses with a ferocity that it consistently fails to muster for US domestic ones, but nevertheless.
"Meanwhile, people who rioted across England and Northern Ireland earlier this month were sentenced to two years on average for their participation in the violence." This is the most absurd thing, like not being able to talk about the fight against climate change as a defence in court. >>
Given I’ve just found multiple articles in the British media criticising these very sentences, I’m not sure how it’s schooling anyone. It’s just a report akin to others. In addition, the top sentence for rape is life imprisonment, so it’s clearly trying to create a false equivalence here.
Come and protest in Northern Ireland we give out really short sentences.