A Place to Stand

Reporting on the arrest of Karadzic last night the ITN news showed their notorious concentration camp film again. They said that it was genuine & proved that Karadzic had been running concentration camps & even wheeled on Penny Marshall to say how good it was.

The only problem is that ITN know & indeed have accepted that it was a lie albeit an allegedly "accidental" one. In the ITN-LM trial ITN, in the names of its reporters, sued LM magazine for reprinting an article, previously published in Germany, saying that the film had been faked. What appears above to be people being held behind barbed wire, as would be necessary in a concentration camp, were actually on the outside of an electric transformer compound ITN's crew had entered to "accidentaly" film them thus.

ITN essentially relied for their defence not on saying that people really were behind the barbed wire but that they had not noticed what they were doing. The judge was helpful:

But isn't it clear, after examining the unedited pictures and the bundle of photographs from Mr. Deichmann, that before the [Bosnian] Civil War the area surrounding the garage…and the electrical transformer was fenced in? This fence was made up of tall metal posts on the top of which was fastened barbed wire and below ordinary wire mesh. It had a gate to the east bound street. Ian Williams, Penny Marshall, and her camera crew openly contradict themselves if they say they did not realize they were surrounded by the old barbed wire fence....' Judge Morland then said: 'But does this matter at all to the case?' He reminded the members of the jury what this Libel case was about. The central question which the jury had to decide on was: In the eyes of the court did LM lie when it said that the ITN reporters deliberately published a misleading photo?"

By telling the jurors that, based on the unusual British libel law, they should decide for ITN unless they were convinced that ITN had deliberately misled the public, the judge set an impossibly high standard for LM.

However ITN have now disowned the accident defence. If, knowing the facts of the court case, ITN are repeating the lie that it was a concentration camp this casts doubt on whether it ever wasn't a deliberate lie.

The judge disallowed evidence that ITN had told her to find concentration camps or not to bother coming back so they could not use this in deciding whether she was or was not perjuring herself when saying that it was an accident. The claim last night, that the film showed a concentration camp clearly shows perjury credible.

The linked article expresses surprise that LM did not appeal. I am merely speculating & have not talked to anybody from LM or its successor Spiked but it is reasonable to assume that what happened was that ITN offered a non-disclosure deal whereby LM were not forced to pay costs so long as they didn't appeal or continue campaigning on Yugoslavia. I couldn't blame them for accepting. If there was a combined legal & damages bill for £675,000 that is a pretty horrible millstone to lay on anybody & if ITN ended up picking up that bill this was a victory of sorts. Certainly nobody in LM seems to have declared bankruptcy, as was widely predicted at the time & Spiked, while producing a large number of intelligent & well thought out politically incorrect articles have noticeably declined to mention Yugoslavia since then, even today.

Fortunately for me the European Human Rights Convention has been incorporated into British law since then, as it was in Germany when the original article was published & ITN didn't sue. This convention guarantees in Sect 10

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference

which means so long as something is information ie factual it can be said. It is a condemnation of British alleged liberties that it required a European convention to allow freedom of speech in this country.

Hopefully the police will show as much interest in the accuracy of Ms Marshall & her compatriot's testimony about accident, in light of their & ITN's repetition of their claims, as they have in Mr Sheriden's infinitely less important activities.

UPDATE - 6.00pm Spiked have put up an article. It is tame by my standards & more importantly by theirs on other subjects. It makes a point of saying "Neither I nor anybody else at spiked supports Karadzic". It also says the reason Spiked have barely mentioned the Yugoslav wars since is because they aren't interested.