Do the politicians negotiating with Hacked Off know who funds them?
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- Published: Monday, 25 March 2013 21:02
- Written by Jonathan Walker
Do our politicians know who is lobbying them?
I'm asking this because I was struck by one of the most remarkable examples of obfuscation I have seen, in a long article by Brian Cathcart, the executive director of the Hacked Off campaign.
The former Reuters journalist, now an academic at Kingston University, has published a piece entitled: "Hacked Off: What did we do? And did we win?". It concludes with the following paragraph:
"We do not regret accepting money to fund our activities from some people who did not want their donations made public. We understand and respect their desire to avoid the kind of hostile treatment that has been dished out to people who openly criticise the press, and we are grateful to them for their generosity. We are grateful too, to the very many generous people who have given money openly. We have been open from the outset about our funding."
You have to admire the chutzpah of anyone who can confirm the organisation he represents is not willing to reveal where it gets its money from and insist it has been open about its funding - in the very same paragraph. My best guess is that he means Hacked Off has always been open about the fact that it won't reveal the sources of its funding.
