Journalism as ’Terrorism’ - Medhurst & Murray

The adjective “Orwellian” is becoming wholly inadequate to describe what is now happening in Western democracies – if we can still call them that. On Aug. 7 journalist and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who is a columnist for Consortium News, had his house raided by the . in upstate New York. The federal agents removed all his electronic devices and boxes of paper documents – Ritter’s archives from his day as a weapons inspector in Iraq, which he fears he will never see again. The U.S. Department of Justice is trying to build a case that because of his journalism, protected under the U.S. First Amendment, Ritter is an unregistered agent of the Russian government. According to George Galloway, YouTube has now begun removing videos of Ritter appearances on Galloway’s show MOATS, perhaps under direction of the . And then last Thursday, British journalist Richie Medhurst was arrested and held for nearly 24 hours upon arrival at Heathrow Airport in London.