Hello @annabotting, You are the @SkyNews presenter here. Did you challenge @adamboultonTABB when he accused Sally Rooney of taking an 'anti-Jewish' stance? If not, why not?

Hello @adamboultonTABB, Please explain why you think Sally Rooney is taking an 'anti-Jewish' stance.

In June, we had the pleasure of chatting with Peter Oborne on Zoom about an article he was planning to write to mark our 25th anniversary. Oborne has worked as political editor of the Spectator, as chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, as a journalist at the Evening Standard, as a commentator at the Express, and has made nearly 30 documentaries for Channel 4, BBC World and BBC Radio 4. One might not ordinarily expect this track record to translate as sympathy for our cause, but Oborne is a rare fish indeed. Consider, for example, that one of our first mentions of his journalism came in 2009 when he responded like this in the Daily Mail to an MPs’ expenses scandal: ‘Nobody can say any longer that our politicians are motivated by honesty, duty or patriotism. Almost to a man and woman they have been exposed as cheats and crooks whose primary motivation is lining their own pockets rather than serving Britain. ‘As a result, Parliament itself no longer looks like our greatest national institution. Instead, it has been exposed as an organised criminal conspiracy whose primary purpose is to defraud the taxpayer and serve the vested interest of a venal political class.’ Having somehow got away with that blast of honesty, a decade later, Oborne published an excoriating piece titled, ‘British journalists have become part of Johnson’s fake news machine’, commenting: ‘Papers and media organisations yearn for privileged access and favourable treatment. And they are prepared to pay a price to get it. ‘This price involves becoming a subsidiary part of the government machine. It means turning their readers and viewers into dupes. ‘This client journalism allows Downing Street to frame the story as it wants. Some allow themselves to be used as tools to smear the government’s opponents. They say goodbye to the truth.’ This was classic Oborne: blistering honesty completely unhindered by concern for personal consequences born of a fierce integrity and deeply felt compassion for the victims of greed and cruelty. The response from his rather less honourable ‘mainstream’ peers: instant, total cancellation: ‘This article marked the end of my thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me, without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with the Daily Mail after our disagreement.’ (Peter Oborne, ‘The Assault on Truth – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism,’ Simon & Schuster, 2021, p.132) Warm thanks to Peter Oborne and to Declassified UK for allowing us to republish the piece below for our annual appeal for support: medialens.substack.com/p/pet…