Update: Carole Cadwalladr has disputed the fairness and accuracy of this article as follows: She says she is continuing to defend the libel claim by Arron Banks. When Cadwalladr presented her reporting to The Observer, The Guardians Sunday edition, she told me her editors said it would have to run as a short news story. It was not just Ms Cadwalladr's reputation at "stake", but also the "ability of the press to report freely on such issues". [9], Anthony Barnett wrote in the blog of The New York Review of Books about Cadwalladr's articles in The Observer, which have reported malpractice by campaigners for Brexit, and the illicit funding of Vote Leave, in the 2016 EU membership referendum. [9] With regard to the Trump presidential campaign allegation, although the full report remains unpublished, the Mueller investigation reported that it had not found evidence that the Trump campaign had conspired with the Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election. outside the National Crime Agency. ), Because The Guardian did not employ Cadwalladr full-time, its ability to exercise control over her was limited, allowing her to blur the distinction between journalist and activist. I was like, Okay, thats it The women are going to have to do this one, Cadwalladr joked. My fear is that this will open the floodgates for similar attempts to silence other journalists, she says. That was in 2017. She dropped her defence of truth and relied on one of public interest. Dear parents, a reminder that we are dressing up for World Book Day! The primary name associated with your approved adoption application. She had spent years investigating and reporting on the alleged links between the Brexit campaign and Russia. [26], On 13 June 2022, Banks lost the case. This is very much her vibe: an extremely funny, relentlessly sweary, exceedingly down-to-earth and highly unlikely candidate to be flung into a world of spies and disinformation. ), Her tweets have also bought into a lot of the imagery of the so-called Resistance media in the United States. The UK is ranked 24th out of 180 countries in RSFs, Technological censorship and surveillance. In conversation with TED Global Curator Bruno Giussani, Cadwalladr discusses the latest on her reporting on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal -- and what we still don't know about the transatlantic links between Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. Tomorrow Carole Cadwalladr, the award-winning journalist who uncovered the Cambridge Analytica scandal, will be in court facing a defamation suit from Brexit-backing businessman Arron Banks. They pretended there were not serious reasons to vote the way we did, but only vacuous, stupid people, led down the wrong road by agents of a foreign power. Read about our approach to external linking. interview", "Democracy and the Machinations of Mind Control", "The Observer fought off legal threats from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica", "Facebook's role in Brexit and the threat to democracy | TED2019", "TED offers Mark Zuckerberg a stage to explain himself once and for all", "Curator's Picks: Top 10 TED Talks of 2019 | TED Talks", "My TED talk: how I took on the tech titans in their lair", "Facebook gets called out at TED for breaking democracy", "The Web's Dark Chapter Unveiled At TED 2019", "Carole Cadwalladr will defend 'true' claims about Brexiteer Arron Banks in libel battle", "Free expression groups call on Arron Banks to drop SLAPP lawsuit against Carole Cadwalladr", "Arron Banks drops two parts of libel claim against Carole Cadwalladr", "Judge makes preliminary ruling in Carole Cadwalladr libel case", "Observer's Carole Cadwalladr apologises for false claim against Arron Banks in now deleted tweet", "Brexit: Vote Leave broke electoral law, says Electoral Commission", "Leave. Carole Cadwalladr is a journalist for The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the United Kingdom. Carole Jane Cadwalladr (/kdwldr/; born 1969) is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. [11] It was one of the opening talks of TED's 2019 conference and Cadwalladr called out the 'Gods of Silicon Valley Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page & Jack Dorsey' by name. Banks, who funded the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, succeeded in only one of three challenges brought to the court of appeal. [20] According to The Guardian, "Banks's lawyers argued this meant there were strong grounds to believe he would assist the interests of the Russian government, against those of the British government, in exchange for that money". Reacting to the decision in a Twitter thread, Cadwalladr described the case as absurdity after absurdity and Kafkaesque, and noted she had won on two out of three grounds of principle. However, the judges acknowledged that Ms Cadwalladr is not in control of what the TED organisation publishes, and we note that Mr Banks chose not to sue Ted Talks. These chilling realities, when combined with the complexity of defending a case under UK libel laws, explain why British journalists are reluctant to publish information about wealthy or powerful individuals. Since Banks was a leading figure in and a substantial donor to the leave campaign, she had inevitably become interested in his finances, and in a Ted Talk in April 2019 referred briefly to him in 24 words and later said something similar in a tweet. A GNM spokesperson said: Carole Cadwalladrs award-winning journalism has prompted worldwide debate on social media, privacy and political targeting. Social media is a threat to democracy: Carole Cadwalladr speaks at TED2019. Receives Mutts Across America Grant, Straylight Savings Time Check your pets microchips. T, o be absolutely clear: this is a minor skirmish. Last year, he lost a high court case brought personally against Cadwalladr in relation to two instances from 2019 one in a Ted Talk and the other in a tweet in which she said the businessman was lying about his relationship with the Russian state. 7,702 followers. Channel 4 News said it knew of, but could not independently identify, the backer. By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our. She has also reported on alleged links between Nigel Farage, the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and the Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election that has been investigated in the United States. [8], Starting in late 2016 The Observer published an extensive series of articles by Cadwalladr about what she called the "right-wing fake news ecosystem". Cadwalladr is constantly relitigating her findings online, and fending off activist media outlets such as the pro-Brexit website Guido Fawkes, which has published stories attempting to discredit her work. Perhaps it is necessary to say at this point that I have never met either Banks or Cadwalladr and have no special love for either of them. Wylie would never have trusted them, and the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica story would have gone unreported. She says she found it entirely reasonable for Wylie to seek a financial backer because he was taking a huge legal and financial risk in coming forward, which required him to break a nondisclosure agreement. As Guido reports here she conceded that she had no evidence and could not go ahead with the case. Now, when Cadwalladr has to stand up just one of her claims in court it turns out as some of us guessed all along that she cannot. The journalists successful defence is a testament to her courage and a warning to the very wealthy that they cant rely on the courts to escape criticism, Arron Banks set out to crush me in court. We depend on you in order to be able to monitor respect for press freedom and take action worldwide. For now, at the height of her fame, both her reputation and these court cases hang in the balance, having become bound up with whether claims of Russian involvement in Brexit and Trumps election check out. But it is a law the overwhelming majority of English and Welsh people cannot begin to afford. The severity of this countrys defamation laws and the cost of fighting a case make the high court a casino in which too often only the very wealthy can afford to play. But to her opponents, she is something else: a hysterical middle-aged conspiracy theorist, someone who pushed her stories beyond what the facts supported and who was willing to legally threaten journalists she was working with to get her wayor, in the words of the BBC journalist Andrew Neil, a mad cat woman.. We need you. They have also won her more than a dozen awards, and seen her named as a finalist for a Pulitzer. Click to fill out a free no-obligation adoption application or learn more about our adoption policies and procedures. The single meaning of Ms Cadwalladr's words was that: "On more than one occasion Mr Banks told untruths about a secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law on such funding", Ms Cadwalladr said she did not intend to make that allegation, and accepts it was untrue, After initially putting forward a truth defence, Ms Cadwalladr withdrew that defence, She then used a public interest defence to justify her statements and Ms Cadwalladr established that "her belief that publishing the TED talk was in the public interest was reasonable", The court found that talk "had caused serious harm to his [Banks's] reputation", But Mrs Justice Steyn said: "I accept the TED talk was political expression of high importance, and great public interest (in the strictest sense), not only in this country but worldwide", The tweet, which Mr Banks also complained about, had not caused "serious harm" to his reputation. The word SLAPP was raised during the trial. Though the High Court did not consider the case to be a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), RSF and the wider UK anti-SLAPP coalition have characterised it as such, because it was aimed at isolating and intimidating Cadwalladr. Our initial meeting did not take me to The Guardians offices in central London, but to her Instagram-perfect apartment, full of flowers, white walls, and communist kitsch in a privatized apartment on a public-housing block a few minutes from some of the most genteel parts of North London. Mr Banks claimed he was defamed after comments Ms Cadwalladr made about his relationship with the Russian state. But the wolves are gathering", "Guardian and Observer scoop three prizes in British Journalism Awards", "British Journalism Awards 2017: Nick Ferrari is journalist of the year, Inside Housing named top news provider", "Guardian and Observer journalists win nine awards at Press Awards", "National Press Awards winners announced", "Orwell Prize 2018: The Orwell Prize for Journalism", "The Observer's Carole Cadwalladr wins Reporters Without Borders' 'L'esprit de RSF' award", "New York Times Wins Two George Polk Awards", "Amelia Gentleman and Carole Cadwalladr win joint journalist of the year award", "Observer's Carole Cadwalladr: Award wins are 'important piece of armour' against critics who attack me and my reporting", "National Press Awards: Guardian and Observer win for Windrush and Cambridge Analytica", "UCLA Anderson School of Management Announces 2019 Gerald Loeb Award Winners", Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative journalist, "The Links Between Russia, Trump And Brexit", Gerald Loeb Award winners for Investigative, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carole_Cadwalladr&oldid=1142152309, People educated at Radyr Comprehensive School, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from June 2022, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from September 2022, All Wikipedia articles in need of updating, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, British Journalism Awards' Technology Journalism Award in December 2017, Specialist Journalist of the Year 2017 at the National, Two 2018 British Journalism Awards for Technology reporting and Investigation, Technology journalist of the year in the 2018, This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 20:10. She speaks during Session 1 of TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 15, 2019 in . The UK is ranked 24th out of 180 countries in RSFs 2022 World Press Freedom Index. Discover our world press freedom ranking, our latest investigation reports as well as our publications produced every day by our regional offices, in connection with our network of correspondents in 115 countries around the world. If any information comes up it will be updated. As a journalist, her work in the second decade of the 21st century has been about issues related to technology. ", A.R.F. [17] Banks lost the case on 13 June 2022. In a High Court ruling, his case was dismissed as the judge concluded that Cadwalladr had a reasonable belief that her comments were in the public interest. At its peak in January, Cadwalladr had 411 donors who had collectively pledged $2,143 a month. Cadwalladrs reporting has put direct pressure on Cummingsin March, he was found in contempt of Parliament after refusing to appear before a committee investigating fake news, with an agenda largely set by Cadwalladrs revelations. The judgment, written by Lord Justice Warby, also said on serious harm that there was insufficient basis for Steyns finding that the opinion of the publishees were of no consequence to Banks because he did not care what they thought. Before she found herself on the trail that led to her fame, Cadwalladr and a friend were developing a script for a television show. [15][16] Some of the "tech giants" criticised complained about "factual inaccuracies", but when invited to specify them did not respond. The world order is changing in his favour, The sinister rise of drag shows for children, Theresa May is the true villain in this latest Tory Brexit war. These cats are either two-paw or four-paw declaw. She has for example, interviewed Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. [10], In April 2019, Cadwalladr gave a 15-minute TED talk about the links between Facebook and Brexit, entitled "Facebook's role in Brexit and the threat to democracy". A & B Animal Rescue of SW Arkansas (Ashdown, AR), Almost Home Dog Rescue of Ohio (Dublin, OH), American Humane (Washington, DC), Animal Humane New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM), ARK - Animal Rescue Konsortium (Crescent City, FL), Animal Rescue of the Rockies (Aurora, CO), Animal Rescue Rhode Island (Peace Dale, RI), APA Adoption Center (St. Louis, MO), Arizona Humane Society, Baldwin Humane Society . As she herself says, the personal, physical, psychological and professional toll for her of fighting the case has been profound. This talk was presented at an official TED conference. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. It is quite another that a distinguished award for journalism should continue to encourage such behaviour. The legal action has strained Cadwalladrs relationship with The Guardian, which she says declined to offer her financial support in her legal situation. The answer is all too obvious: because it would weaken the UK. In the process she has not only attacked individuals, but every member of the British public who voted for Brexit in 2016. Using the near magical power an English legal education gives learned judges, he decided that what her statements had actually meant was that Banks was telling lies abouta secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law. The courts should become a luxury product, like prime property in Mayfair or Beluga caviar, sold in the global marketplace, and with prices to match, rather than an affordable means of delivering justice to the people of this country. The paper actually wrote about Cambridge Analytica before she did, but failed to capitalize on a 2015 scoop revealing the firm was harvesting Facebook data. Her behaviour has in fact been far more damaging to this country and the journalistic trade than Haris ever was. One of the UK's most prominent journalists, Carole Cadwalladr, hired lawyers to threaten Channel 4 News with an injunction while they were partnering on an undercover investigation into. ADOPTABLES. Carole Cadwalladr's Adoption. Cadwalladr's first novel, The Family Tree, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Author's Club First Novel Award, the Waverton Good Read Award, and the Wales Book of the Year. Cadwalladr has been going around for years making these and other unfounded accusations in every forum and on every platform she can manage. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. No commitment. A GNM spokesperson said: " Carole Cadwalladr's award-winning journalism has prompted worldwide debate on social media, privacy and political targeting. Interest Form for Pre-Approved Applicants. What Banks lawyers argued is that after 29 April 2020, a date on which the Electoral Commission publicly accepted there was no evidence Banks had committed a criminal offence, Cadwalladrs public interest defence fell away, and that she should therefore pay damages from that point on. All the whileas she engages in debates online and goes after her criticsshe receives a near-constant torrent of sexist abuse, which she showed me on her phone. Do you think they would have accepted claims from Corbyns defenders that it was a non-story pumped up to damage the left? So we are talking about between 1.5 and 2 million for a single case. The potential costs of defending a case can run into millions of pounds and can be enough to persuade many publishers, let alone individual journalists, to back down and settle without going to court. However, the judge concluded that, in context, the Ted Talk and the related tweet meant that "On more than one occasion Mr Banks told untruths about a secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law on such funding". If she is wrong, then both her Brexit-Trump-Russia narrative and her career will be in trouble. I have seen some right-wingers on social media saying that she got off on the weird technicality of a public interest defence in relation to that TED talk. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal isn't about privacy -- it's about power, says journalist Carole Cadwalladr. With respect to the Ted Talk, the judge found that the public interest defence fell away after the Electoral Commission found no evidence of law-breaking by Banks with respect to donations. The UK Court of Appeal's ruling partially in favour of businessman Arron Banks in his defamation case against journalist Carole Cadwalladr is disappointing and risks having a chilling effect on investigative journalism. Warby wrote: My conclusion that the trial judge erred in the ways I have identified is not enough in itself to justify the reversal of her decision Nonetheless, so far as the Ted Talk is concerned, I have concluded that the judges errors do fatally undermine her conclusion. Media freedom is a fundamental right, but nearly half of the worlds population has no access to freely reported news and information. There is no information about Carole Cadwalladr's adoption. Separately, Nick Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister who is now Facebooks vice president of global affairs and communications, has dismissed claims that Cambridge Analytica influenced the Brexit referendum, suggesting some kind of plot or conspiracy was a simplistic crutch to explain away the result.