Liam Fox Attacks Guardian Pulitzer

Still there is no word on the Guardian US securing the Pulitzer Prize in the Public Service category – alongside the Washington Post – from most of the UK press. But what we have seen today is the Daily Mail attacking the paper for its work on the Snowden revelations by quoting extensively from an embittered and vindictive has-been on the fringes of the Tory Party. Thus the level of desperation.

So, while Amy Davidson at the New Yorker concludes “Awarding the Pulitzer for public service to the Guardian and the Washington Post should go down as about the easiest call the prize committee has ever had to make ... a defining case of the press doing what it is supposed to do. The President was held accountable ... his Administration had to change its policies”, the Mail pushes back.

“Fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden is guilty of treason for leaking details of eavesdropping operations by GCHQ and the NSA, Liam Fox declared yesterday. In a speech in the United States, the former defence secretary said the former spy has endangered the lives of British spies and their families by revealing the techniques used by the intelligence agencies to al Qaeda and foreign enemies” it declares.

That this is a deliberate move can be deduced from the use of deputy political editor Tim Shipman to pen the article, which, putting it directly, means the line therein has been handed down by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. For Dacre, the Guardian is beyond the pale; its pursuit of Phonehackgate and revelation of The Dark Arts led to the exposure of the now-closed Screws, and Leveson.

So the achievement of the Guardian US – a recent start-up – in bagging a Pulitzer so soon after it joined the journalistic fray Stateside is something to be ignored. Moreover, the established line, that peddled by the spooks, holding that the Snowden revelations were some sort of treachery that endangered our “agents”, whoever they are, was to be maintained, no matter how desperate the source.

And sources do not get much more desperate than Liam Fox, who, since the exposure of his joint activities with Adam Werritty by, guess who, the Guardian, has been touted by Very Few Credible Tories as the party’s saviour, while anyone with brain plugged in and a hole in their jacksy has steered well clear of the SOB. Fox will be lucky to remain as a back-bench MP, let alone anything grander.

Fox’s casual dishonesty includes “It is clear that the material seized from [David] Miranda contained personal information would allow security staff to be identified”, but the spooks haven’t cracked the encryption, so neither they nor he would know. Meanwhile, in the Real World part of the USA, more than two dozen other media outlets have followed up the Snowden story.

But the Mail wants readers to remain frightened and ignorant. No change there.