Saturday, 22 October 2022

 Hampstead: 

"Episode 1

Secrets and lies"


https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/hoaxed-alexi-mostrous-secrets-and-lies/


Production Team



This is a professional and effective retelling - complete with dramatic background music - of the Hampstead case. 

It's obvious objective is to debunk the initial children's accounts, absolve and exonerate the accused genetic father and pass the blame for a made up fantasy on a violent step father. 

For someone unfamiliar with the particulars of the story and the people involve, it may be successful. For those who have followed the story closely from the beginning, it is unlike to be so. 

I for one, for all my reservations about mother and step father, still believe the children's initial accounts. They are too accurate and particular, often of details that would not and could be known by them unless they had experience of them. 

Everything about the body language and vocabulary of the police interviews supports the voracity of their accounts.  Everything about the police procedure suggests either incompetence or connivance.

See: https://twitter.com/AlexiMostrous/status/1582980837905027072?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Basia Cummings  Editor




DoB: August, 1989

“There has never been a more crucial time to expose the power gap, and build new and inclusive ways of telling stories that matter. I joined Tortoise to do just that.”

Before Tortoise, Basia was news editor at HuffPost and worked on the foreign desk at the Guardian. She is on the board of The Student View, a charity trying to build a newsroom in every school. She resigned as Director on the 25 November, 2021.

After a BA degree in Social anthropology and a Masters from Goldsmiths College in 'Visual Culture', she worked for the Guardian from 2014 - 17. From 2017 - 2018 she worked for the WHO based in Bonn at the 'Institute of Environment and Human Security'. Her next job from 2018 - 2019 was as an editor for Huff Post. In 2019 she joined Tortoise Media as Editor.

Interestingly she shares her surname with the notorious Dominick but it appears if her twitter comment is anything to go by, to be unrelated. 

Tweet

Conversation

Truly the shittest person to share a name with. #sackcummings

It also appears she is not the most proficient at typing, spelling or proof reading, which for an editor must be problematic.



As to the organisation for which she is Editor, Tortoise (or a 'Rich Man's Club' only available on subscription at one of three levels) Wikipedia has this:



Tortoise Media

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Tortoise Media
Tortoise Media wordmark.png
Tortoise Media's wordmark
Screenshot of the home page of Tortoise Media, from November 29, 2020.png
Type of site
News website
Available inEnglish
URLhttps://www.tortoisemedia.com/[dead link]

Tortoise Media is a British news website co-founded by former BBC News director and The Times editor James Harding.[1][2][3]

A funding campaign for the site launched on Kickstarter in October 2018 raised £539,035 with the site going live in April 2019.[4] The site's slogan is "Slow down, wise up."[5]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Bell, Emily (22 October 2018). "Can James Harding's Tortoise be more than a rich person's club?"The GuardianArchived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  2. ^ Southern, Lucinda (3 January 2019). "Tortoise wants members to inform its 'slow-news' coverage via live events"DigidayArchived from the original on 9 August 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  3. ^ Mayhew, Freddy (22 October 2018). "Tortoise editor James Harding says move to 'slow news' follows 'lesson' at Times and BBC that journalism that took longer had 'real impact'"Press GazetteArchived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  4. ^ Tobitt, Charlotte (28 June 2019). "'Slow news' venture Tortoise creates 'inclusive' members' model with potential to partner with local publishers"Press GazetteArchived from the original on 29 October 2020.
  5. ^ Brown, Mariella. "'Slow down, wise up': a motto for the future of media?"Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2021.

As to the author of the pod cast
Alexi Mostrous

Partner / Editor at Tortoise Media
Linked-in has this:

"An investigative reporter and editor with 15+ years experience at national newspapers and most recently an award-winning digital start-up. Host of the Sweet Bobby podcast. Three times winner of National Press Awards: Tech Journalist of the Year (2020: for Tortoise); News Reporter of the Year (2013) and Scoop of the Year (2013) for reporting on tax avoidance. Previously a barrister. Previously head of investigations at The Times, now a partner at Tortoise Media with a focus on business and tech."  

Pupil Barrister
Brick Court ChambersSep 2004 - Sep 2005 · 1 yr 1 mo


Slow journalism start-up Tortoise has built a membership community of over 110,000 and a monthly social reach of 12 million since its inception in 2019.30 May 2022

A Digital membership to Tortoise is £100 a year or £12 a month, depending on how you choose to pay. Members who join through the App Store or Google Play Store pay £11.99 a month, or £99.99 annually, and become digital members. A Newsroom membership is £250 a year.

The organisation has already set to prove, on-line voting for the Conservative Party leader cab be manipulated as follows:

A fictitious tortoise trying to vote for Britain’s next leader raises security concerns over online ballot

October 21, 2022 at 5:05

Everybody needs to watch this clip of Camilla Cavendish describing how Tortoise Media have registered a tortoise, an American, and a Ukrainian, none of which exist, to be eligible to vote in the Tory leadership contest as Conservative members. General Election please

As to James Harding, Wikipedia has this:

James Harding (journalist)


Editor of the Times 2007 - 2012
Director of News at the BBC 2014 - 2018

Harding was raised in north-west London, the grandson of a German Jewish refugee.[7] He was educated at two independent schools for boys: at The Hall School in Hampstead in North West London and St. Paul's School in Barnes, near Hammersmith in London,[8] followed by Trinity College, Cambridge (where he attained a First Class degree in history)[4] and City University.[9] Harding also spent a year studying at Davidson College in the United States[citation needed]. Harding won a Daiwa Scholarship in 1991, where he undertook intensive Japanese language study and worked as a speechwriter to Koichi Kato, who was Chief Secretary to the Cabinet of Japan, and for the Japan unit of the European Commission. Before entering the media, he studied Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies.[10]

He began his career as a journalist at the Financial Times in 1994 in Shanghai.



Interestingly at the relevant time the Hampstead abuse story broke (early 2015 (the children were first interviewed by police on 5.9.2014)) Alexi Mostrous was working for the BBC as a 'Special Correspondent (2011 - 2016) and 'Head of Investigations (2016 - 17)
In the same time period James Harding was Director of News (2014 - 2018)
In this same time slot (2014 -2017) Basia Cummings worked for the Guardian before joining the new James Harding start-up.
It was also during this period (20.4.2015) the notorious Victoria Derbyshire of the father and alleged abuser took place, portraying him as the innocent victim, up there with that of Prince Andrew for a far less serios allegation. It was broadcast by the BBC and is still on You Tube here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5f9N6wmiLQ&t=3s

In other words all three were in employment situations with news organisations that were generally sceptical of the children's allegations from the beginning. This latest podcast pours scorn not only only the Hampstead case but uses it to support the view that all claims are to be doubted. That after what we know from the The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) that has just reported and all other cases, is itself highly suspicious. Government in collusion with the mainstream media has been desperate to counter the Hampstead story, and this podcast appears to be just another iteration of it. In passing IICSA has been described as "not worth the paper it is written on" despite validating hundreds of thousands of child abuse, mainly by men in institutional settings. Whether it was worth the £200 million to tell us what we already knew, is anybody's guess. In any case the allegation is that it  was carefully crafted to protect the police, social services and other government agencies including the police from blame. In other words a 'whitewash', much like the Tortoise podcast referred to.


Is it just me or do I detect a whiff of the Secret
Services through out this review?  Check out the
comments below. Sorry there's such a big space from
the formatting that I can't fix.

1 comment:

  1. https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/2019/08/phoenix-speaks-out-ritually-abused-at.html

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