damn afshin rattansi welcome to a lock down season premiere of going underground while we've been away coronavirus levels here in britain have reached the highest per capita rates in the world we've seen an attempted insurrection in washington d.c. and of course the world's most famous journalist and publisher julian assad is not to be extradited to have a ginia court too thanks to judge for that separates that was nevertheless kept him in a maximum security prison here in london where according to the un special rapporteur he's being tortured by u.k. authorities who are joining me now is one of joining us on just media partners the former editor of the guardian newspaper alan rusbridger his new book is called news and how to use it what to believe in a fake news world alan welcome to the show what's sad about the new book arguably is the fact you begin by saying you're writing it at the peak of the pandemic we now know that isn't the case what's it like writing a book on journalism during log well i wish i'd had foresight that was written in

the spring and i think we all saw that was the worst but of course we're now in a much graver situation. but i still think the themes of. journalism. people believe and how people know what to believe still is relevant as they were when i wrote. i mean i'm right in the title of the book is the issue of fake news especially especially important right now obviously with the i don't know how you would measure the level of. scientific dissonance going on here in britain and around the world against big pharma vaccines and so on. well i think journalists are very conscious that maybe for the 1st time in their lives what they write could be the difference between life and death so i think there's a a gravity to the awareness of what journalism is and i think on the public

side there is a growing awareness i would say frightened us of what happens when you live in a society of information chaos so when you don't know whether something happened or didn't happen whether something is to be believed or not it doesn't take long for elements of society to break down and the issue money and journalism runs like a thread throughout the book you say that when it comes to coronavirus reporting news rooms they didn't fire their health and science reporters for budget constraints are obviously doing meth. yeah and we know one of the responses to the economic crisis of news was to hollow out newsrooms and that's an understandable response because you've got shareholders or whatever. but in the end that meant that some newsrooms when the crisis struck didn't have people who were knowledgeable and who could write with all sorts and rita soon pick up on that and

i think it's a big mistake to. to attack in a. really serious way the genesee operation which is all in the end you can sell now you go through a whole lot of journalism terms there. important in journalism regulated you demolish a lot of these myths about accuracy fairness take me through them what if i demolish them i'm mean i think journalists should aim obviously at accuracy but there are lots of issues on which if you're a regulator climate change would be one israel palestine i mean only sort of highly contested issues regulators find very hard to deal with when when people appeal to them i begin with you know even the example of the height of mount everest is something that nobody can agree on so although accuracy you know journalists are taught in that 1st week in journalism school is something that is it's called

a journalism it's more complicated than it seems and ditto fairness. i think tennis is a good thing in possibility is a good thing but it's a very contested because who are you being impartial between and on what subjects you call fantasy technique accuracy a quagmire that's response. still as true today as when i wrote it you also define experts that someone who is knowledgeable so knowledgeable about a subject they recognise their own ignorance. yeah we've been through sort of funny phase with experts him where. there was a kind of populist revolt against experts the british cabinet minister michael gove's famously said we've had enough of the experts. but of course experts are now arguably back in fashion now because who you're going to believe about

a pandemic that chen seemed to be the polling in as much as you can believe polling now days seem to be that people are rather reassured by the side by the sight of people who have got lots of letters of the name and seem to know what they're talking about away from the pandemic though maybe not away from the pandemic is the only blair is reportedly an advisor to the british government on coronavirus what do you make of who news room seek to platform and who they don't seek a platform i mean dhoni blair is an alleged war criminal he's he's offering his advice as a former prime minister i think i would probably rather listen to the viewpoint of scientists on that but but i think blair is worth listening to really come to the heart of the book which is why would people what reason are we giving to people to return to journalism so if we're living in a sea of false information what argument are we making that we are the people to be trusted and one of the reasons is that i think we are discerning in the people we

turn to for expertise and i give lots of examples in the book of. cases where people who are controversial or amusing all provocative but actually know nothing about what they're talking about are too often picked because they're going to entertain all they're going to get clicks rather than being of any value and i think that degrades public confidence in journalism ok but i'll give you a more terrifying is the quotation from a newspaper man here all day can you say and talk about a code of silence what is the code of silence. it is there a code of silence in british media well what i was referring to was. the my belief that the media is a very powerful force in society and all forces all powerful forces of society they deserve to be examined but i know from my own experience when we ran a media section on the guardian and particularly when we started looking at the

underbelly of british media i the phone hacking scandal that we were very strongly discouraged from doing so there seemed to be one rule for media we should stick together and settle our wagons we shouldn't be writing about each other and one rule for other powerful forces the society and i'm don't think that's a good thing do you think much as actually change for viewers around the world when talking about the effect of hacking of a murdered school girls telephone which led to the leveson inquiry in the closure of the west biggest english language newspaper the news of the world well i hope it has i would be surprised if there was that kind of criminality in newsrooms and i think any anybody who any reporter who's seriously thought about intercepting messages or. phone messages or internet messages would know that that is criminal and like they could end up in jail as some reporters did so i hope that send it but

you know there are of course there are as well as being wonderful things about journalism in the u.k. there are still some things which i think garm not so good and i hope i've done fairness to both of them when he said the very critical of all agog and media the concept of all agog media well i think people are now living in an age where anybody can communicate you 4000000000 people are connected around the world. people are asking about the old gold believe the old gate keep people who owned a printing press or broadcasting studio and and use that. privilege to impose their views on the public people in tight last well who are these people beginning only now in the 21st century i feel you have to be careful i mean you said anyone can say what they want amazing the president of united states can't say what he want but you're on the oversight board of facebook and very social media so

you have to be careful maybe you haven't had a meeting yet can you actually tell me what you think of the censoring and banning of the president's camp when i think it's a very difficult question and you're right this is a question that might go to facebook or was i boil it but i mean here in general the issue is between the president all the democratically elected directly to president pratibha elected president our of our of a country which has a strong tradition of free speech and i think he has an overwhelming right to be heard and for people to hear him in order to form judgments about him and that anything that looked as though he was being censored needs to be resisted may be until the moment in which he uses his social media accounts to do what he appears to have done the last week or in the weeks leading up to last week which is actually incitement to start i think i have some sympathy for the way that if intially behaved you know i think it's more that if you're

a seller can valley oligarchy and you've got a new president coming in you're going to do your best to attack that new president's opponent to avoid further regulation in a new job i. that would be a very cynical way of looking at it like i don't know the people who took the decision and i suspect that was in their motivation i suspect that motivation was an extreme concern at the event so whatever it is the next 11 days it's a cynical the book is full of that important difference between cynicism and skepticism so i hope no one of those to them is good citizens i'm not so good. well i mean you are an expert certainly on something else and that is julian assange jews in jail in the in belmarsh prison in the new book i mean you're referred to him 20 times or you call him a secretive hacker

a camera loving performa you call him reckless and he appears to act as a conduit for the russian g.r.u. do you not like julian that aren't well it's well documented that we fell out with after we worked together on the original 201-2011 reveal ations. and i've always said that i would defend him for the work that we did together and i have to and incidentally i you know i've also defended him in his present battle over extradition. so i think. i think whatever his past failings i think he shouldn't be extradited. to want to question what he did in 2016 i'm more dubious about. pot that's not what he's being

charged for so you know. what we want to take a view about that but but i think one has to defend him for what he is being charged well the english judgment as a breakthrough was very clear about what he thought during a sondre done wrong he couldn't be extradited because of a suicide risk but the president has surely been said for you to be able to be extradited for what you did well without getting to know the about it i think there are 3 different categories of information one is the information that we all worked on together which we published a small fraction of and worked carefully to redact things that could cause harm. and i haven't seen anyone really criticize that behavior then there was julian's act in. in releasing the whole archive which is a different form of behavior which we were critical all at the time and the 3rd is whatever happened in 2016 which is i think some people would say not so much

journalism as acting as a conduit for information that had been hacked and that gets you into problematic territory which i discussed also in the book on top of the question of sourcing so . journalist so well used to having sources who themselves may have cristobal motives. are of questionable background does it itself negate the value of a story alan. moore from former editor of the guardian alan rusbridger after this break. as the trump presidency comes to an end the country stares into a political abyss divisions are deeper now than ever before and dialogue is almost nonexistent cause of compromise is deemed to be treasonous by many this will hardly

change. what. i can show you my face but i'm going to teach you my story in 9093 this man was sentenced to death . charged with capital murder even though he didn't have the gun didn't pull the trigger didn't intend to kill anybody imagine living in your bathroom for the week with the scent of a 23. i doubt that i'd be very. happy very. confined within 4 gray walls the fuck it's using. turn on to help him to leave death row. welcome back i'm still here with a former editor of the guardian alan rusbridger you're going to whether you had the greek finance minister yanis varoufakis recently saying that a son who was offered

a pardon from donald trump having just admitted it wasn't the russians and it wasn't the russians says julian it's it's just that he won't say that to anyone because he believes in journalism and he doesn't believe in impinging on any of his sources he's prepared to die for that you know i don't know. about it know that. the sears ties were raised in the inquiry into donald trump that took place under robert mueller but i don't know enough about it to say with any certainty where he got the information from. him but you could speculate on a number of scenarios about where the information came and who hacked it because it was katie illegally hacked material and that poses big moral questions not not only for the misandrous of this well but for you know papers like the new york times in the washington post who went on to use that

material i'm not sure it's necessarily meaningly hack you chose to use it when it came to war crimes in iraq of course. that material yes no i mean that that was no question that was in the terms of the american espionage act it legally change as well as the edward snowden material and that's why i said as there are there are no easy answers i mean my general view as an editor was you have to look at the material itself rather than look at the motives of the leakers which were this which is not an entirely relevant but is the material that sitting in front of you is that all sufficient public importance that it deserves to be published so i think that a better rule for journalists is to look at material say well let's put everything aside and just consider whether the story itself is of value i don't think anyone

in the washington post would read all bernstein by that about motivation when it came to mark felt or deep throat. no it was a great story and they were entirely right to publish it and this is why we have to be very careful when we think about the official secrecy one of the things that disturbs me about the espionage act and the british official secrets act as it stands is that it offers the defendant no. defense you can't say well i did this because i felt it was important valuable that it that that is not taken into consideration and i think we know enough about the behavior of states of all kinds they can behave in our scrupulous way they did definition of what is national security or the public interest isn't always one that stands the test of time i mean have you had a chat with your other media partners in the new york times dish me role holist of them all around the world because presumably the braids of president doesn't mean

that you personally and the other reviews that it is can be extradited to the united states. well technically the that might be true but as i say i think the exercise that i was involved in with with those papers involved a high degree of rejection and selection and care but not causing harm and there has been no a reduction was part of the case was a. reaction wasn't the issue in the breaks or judgement or ruling it was the fact that these was taken yeah well where and and published on mass i think that's the point that there is to my mind you know course this comes back to the question of what journalism is the statement that the media partners of the guardian made we deplore the decision of we getting to publish the under ducted weeks cables which

may put sources at risk i know you'd left the guardian by 26 dean but it was that statement that was cited by the death of rates. to say a son should be extradited but for the suicide risk and yet we go think of the rowing back from that saying krypto may have put the 100 acted cables out there and that they didn't know all the facts in fact wasn't your brother in law the investigation that the tour of the guardian the but the path went out for the documents well there's evidence that. apparently came out in court that i'm not aware of because actually it wasn't a very well reported court case they did the extradition hearing of sanj so there may be material i don't know of but the that this is just a decision at the time of the publishers to distance ourselves from what sounds did was was is was obvious we would spend months. years

working on this material to publish it safely and and so it didn't make sense to us they're often just to release a whole lot. and dish tipping go in effect in court said we together with the guardian said all that about we deplore the decision without the full information because in fact. in fact union sounds did not what the un redacted cables up there with the password it was it was a different outfit that did that. or you're not you know you're tempting me into material which i i don't know enough about because i as i said there of the reporting of the case. was unfortunately not in detail enough to for me to our knowledge of what was said but as far as you know the guardian hasn't taken a different line on like this beagle which said you know if fact that we were kind

of sorry we didn't have the full facts and we deplored juliana's on just decision well from what time do know i don't think it will as a as an entity i think it's one of the reporters who worked on it. younger i'm not conscious that any any of the editors in chief who were involved at the time have rowed back from that statement we surprised that ultimately it was an article in the guardian that vanessa braids a site of saying this is why this kind of work must be punished by extradition if you examine why i followed her judgment on twitter. but at the time i was reading her judgment it and being published it i don't know if it has been published now i'm just going read it do you think that he's being tortured as the u.n. special reporter says. i have heard him speak in london. mustering at. a year ago and i found him very convincing i found him.

you know he's a serious guy and i don't i don't think the word torture is one that i would recognize but but he. but he obviously has has met her sanjay and has spoken to doctors who have seen him and he was very concerned about sandra's mental and physical condition of the time because he's actually said on our show that it was articles in the guardian that contributed to the psychological torture of his son he was referring to marina hyde. who in all seriousness can continue to suppress the odd smirk at the thought of his son told l. when he saw political asylum why did the guardian attack its own source. i think julian's a tough enough character not to be that upset by articles in the guardian honestly . all in all i mean you say you said in interviews you're very proud of it by any

standards one of the greatest journalistic scoop for 30 years you quote the vanity fair description of what you did there on you know here is your reporting as with the snowden reporting you know i completely i'm proud of what we did i think it was an an important story i think we did it well one of the thing you mention in the book of 3 journalists jump ill just i heard the late robert fisk all of who may have contributed to this program why single out these young with this is in the context of how do i know who to trust and if you're if you put your shoe put yourself in the shoes of a reader saying well like i could trust a brand i could say well i will i will always believe everything in the daily telegraph or the guardian or on r.t. . or you could say that there are some journalists that i particularly put my faith and and i choose some journalists who have done outstanding work there's no question the 3 journalists you've just mentioned have done outstanding work but at

the same time i'm aware i'm sure you're aware though that there are also question marks over some of the stories they've done and a lot of journalists are doubtful about some of their work and so that leaves the question well if you're an ordinary reader how do i know who to trust if even their own colleagues don't trust some of their work so i try to explore that difficult question because it comes to the heart of whether there is an agreed craft that we all pursuing and how we really present journalism or something that should be trusted you don't think some reading the book are going to wish you because you lay out the control with these and then you speak like one of us you know i'm not sure where i'm going to but like they got mad on the grab of all numbers here or here it is you do yourself don't they give you is either way on the 3. i think that's the problem i mean that you know fisk is

a journalist robert fisk who died recently since as i read. it was a journalist that in many ways i admired but when i went to look at one or 2 of the stories that he wrote. which involved days of work you know because you go down rabbit warrens on the internet of people who defend him and people who attack him you can go back to the source material in some cases you can spend hours reading conflicting accounts of the material that he was looking at and in the end most of us in the end up shrugging and thinking well i don't know i don't know what to believe and of course you know that takes us back to the beginning of this conversation that most people who don't have the time to do anything remotely like that i think you got to the position of saying why i don't know and it in a way that was donald trump's deliberate tactic he deliberately attacked the best media and said you shouldn't believe them the implication because being you might

as well believe me because there's no such thing as truth my truth is as good as their choose to remember the word alternative facts and it's a very dangerous but deliberate tactic to get people into a frame of mind where they because they don't believe anything they're willing to they're willing to believe anything if that makes sense when are we going to put it all down to those who will put it that all company was late robert fisk on defend himself i want to declare an interest because i was one of the youngest columnists on the go live you know under peter preston and a little bit of your career as editor i'm going to have just been as you're fair because you as an editor. not only did you choose to put out edward snowden's. amazing revelations of massive valence you i guess were forced to allow the top civil servant in this country to come into your office it's with special branch

offices where they destroyed a laptop at no point during your head as you have did you feel this is turning into like some soviet night. well. i mean old what what what what we did was to transfer our publication to new york we worked out of new york which got 1st amendment and we knew that it was extremely unlikely that anybody would come into our offices in new york so that's why we let them destroy the disks in london and. i mean i'm i was not. proud of the behavior of the government and doing that and i wish we had more robust american style protection of the media in order to stop governments from doing that but in the end it didn't make any difference to the story we were publishing you happy that a science facility think it is escaped a month's. yeah i don't know enough about about who helped to that

time but both i think there's a sense of snowden of being on the car about what happened but i'm but i'm glad some suddenly glad that edward snowden is happily ensconced in moscow and is now a father that's that's good news alan rusbridger thank you in news and how do you as it is out now that's it for the shows he once had to. in response to allegations made in this interview kristinn hrafnsson editor in chief of wiki leaks said the guardian statement about the cables misled the partners and was designed to brush over its own reckless action which led to the dumping of unredacted cables on crypto may and the pirate bay the statement is a stain on their reputation as the infamous front page fabrication of 2018 falsely claiming that trump associate paul mana for had visited julian assange. but i'm going to tell you my story in 1993 and this man was sentenced to death.

charged with capital murder even though he didn't have the gun didn't pull the trigger didn't intend to kill anybody imagine living in your bathroom for the week with 23. i doubt that it deserved to be. confined within 4 gray walls he fights using. trying to help him to leave death row. in the headlines this wednesday lunchtime grim footage from a german criminal tory i'm highlighting the extent of her surge in pandemic europe wide amid claims that burdens ignoring e.u.

solidarity on purchases. you'll see what you see there in the restaurant trade for a service really i'm sure the food. for what you're doing right now is making headlines u.k. police cracking down on lockdown violators but are caught on camera maybe apparently breaking the very rules they're trying to enforce. and you tube joins the list of tech giants now purging donald trump.