Palestine Action defendants are facing sentencing as terrorists despite being convicted of criminal damage, lifted reporting restrictions reveal.
After reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday, Middle East Eye is now able to report for the first time that the court will seek to add a “terrorism connection” to their charges at sentencing - a fact that was kept secret from the jury.
Reporting restrictions also barred media from revealing that the defendants had been prohibited from explaining the motivations for their involvement in the raid to jurors.
Prior to the initial trial, the judge had ruled to remove the defence of lawful excuse on the charge of criminal damage, which meant the activists could not argue that the damage they caused was legally justified to prevent greater crimes being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza.
“The Chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The King on the recommendation of Ministers while the other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations and Governance committee.”
“The BBC is primarily funded by a compulsory annual TV license fee paid by UK households.”
That’s a state media, regardless of what it may view itself as.
Edit: Also, I wasn’t wrong about the House of Lord being dictatorial. The things I was wrong about was the complexity of the dictatorship. Instead of it all being chosen by the monarch, some of it is chosen through bribes, some by theocrats and some by politicians. None of the seats are directly chosen by the people, like in a democracy, and that was the whole damn point!
State media means that the government has editorial control, which it does not with the BBC. If they were they wouldn’t have broken stories around the Pincher scandal which was the downfall of the Johnson government, for example
And state media is funded by the state. As you correctly quoted, the BBC is funded by the public
As with your comments on the Lords, it seems like you’ve heard some reactionary soundbites and regurgitated them as fact because they fit into your world view, rather than taking the time to learn how the things you’re criticising actually work and forming your opinion from there