A slippery slope

Last month an investigative journalist was detained by the counter-terrorism police at Luton Airport. Kit Klarenberg had flown from Belgrade for a home visit when he was arrested and subjected to an intense interrogation over his political views and journalistic output. He had his photo, fingerprints and DNA taken and his bank cards, electronic devices and SD cards seized under Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019.
    Klarenberg writes for the Grayzone, an independent American news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and imperialism.
    He is, perhaps, best known for using leaked emails to expose Paul Mason’s scheming with influential security figures to discredit alternative media outlets, academics and peace activists critical of NATO’s role in the Ukraine war and shut down anti-NATO publications and organisations. Mason, a Labour Party supporter, reported Klarenberg to the police.
    Klarenberg has also written on role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions for Iran’s Press TV and Russia’s Sputnik news. All of this is clearly why he was detained.
    His interrogators demanded to know whether the Grayzone had a special arrangement with Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to publish hacked material and whether he had any contacts with Russian state media and Russian intelligence. They wanted to know who owns the Grayzone and they asked him whether he thought that it was sponsored by the Russians.
    When Klarenberg noted that he had publicly criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the police demanded to know if “anyone” from the Russian government had contacted him to complain. “Presumably, they wanted to know if my criticisms had pissed off my ‘controllers’,” Klarenberg said. “Which is a completely ridiculous proposition.”
    An extended philosophical discussion about journalism and the public interest followed. “Your work might be interesting to the public,” an officer told Klarenberg, “but it’s not in the public interest.” He insisted that a journalist could be furthering the interests of a hostile state actor in reporting on national security issues.
    “I tried to explain that if material can be authenticated, then the material is the source. We are not citing claims from a human source that provided the material, we are reporting on provided source material in a factual way,” Klarenberg said.
    The journalist was eventually released after five hours of this nonsense and his property returned apart from one of his memory cards that was said to be "relevant to criminal proceedings" that would be returned when the investigation was over.
    Klarenberg is a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), and his union did issue a statement on 2nd June expressing their “grave concern” over his arrest. The NUJ said that: “The apparent targeting of a journalist risks creating a chilling effect on others reporting on stories in the public interest and many will be aware that it follows the recent arrest of publisher Ernest M [detained over his connection with the pension protests in France], also under counter-terrorism legislation by British police in April. Journalists will no doubt be astounded by actions of the police and rightly expect information on reasons behind Kit's detention.” Sadly, the article was removed from the NUJ’s website within 24 hours.
    We are constantly told that we have a ‘free press’ but that ‘freedom’, as we well know, only operates within the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable to the bourgeoisie. In the past the ruling class has been content to use the draconian libel laws and their control of the mainstream media simply to marginalise dissenting voices. Now it seems they are going to use anti-terror legislation to intimidate journalists who challenge the bourgeois consensus.