“Banging the Drum Against Human Rights”

I like to think that I can spot a Media Lens shill from two feet away from a computer screen. But Ellie Keen got past the defences and it was not until her third email that I detected the distinctive edge of hard-left psycho-ideology.

For those of you who are not familiar with this cult of admirers of Noam Chomsky, I have dealt with them before on this blog. Their way of working is to write polite emails to journalists (wage slaves of the corporate media) taking issue, usually in a tone quite alien to the frothing bottom-dwellers of internet comments boxes, with something they have written. Journalist sometimes replies suggesting that they write to the letters editor, and sometimes tries to justify what he or she has written.

This may continue until journalist is too busy to reply or until the snarl of Chomskian-Pilgerism is unwittingly betrayed and journalist realises he or she has not been engaging with a reasonable person.

At this point, Media Lens adherent then posts the email chain on the sect’s website, without notice or permission, under the heading “Correspondence with John Rentoul“. This is supposed to embarrass the apologist for the corporate media/torture/Tony Blair and expose him to ridicule by other sect members. In case the words of the emails themselves are insufficient for this purpose, she provides some commentary, and introduces the collection by putting in quotation marks a phrase that is not contained in what follows.

In this case, I thought Keen’s first email cogent enough to be worth replying to on this blog (without publishing her name, of course), although her knowledge of the Chahal case seemed a little suspect.

Judge for yourself.

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