Rightwing Journalists Keep Grassing Up Activists to the Police

On Sunday 14 January, 31-year-old Sean Middleborough was sitting with his solicitor in police custody. In the early hours of that morning – three months into Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza – Middleborough had been arrested in Liverpool on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage as part of direct action group Palestine Action.

While they were waiting for a police interview, Middleborough’s solicitor went online to discover that the arrest had already hit the news. Middleborough had been exposed by Max Parry, a Daily Express reporter who’d gone undercover within Palestine Action, disclosing plans for an action the next day. Not only that, but it had been the Express that had passed evidence to the police, prompting the arrest of Middleborough and five others.

Ahead of the planned action, Middleborough hadn’t had any idea that Parry was a reporter. “They were a very enthusiastic individual,” Middleborough told Novara Media. “When I found out, I was like, ‘what?!’”

Parry’s article alleged that Palestine Action was planning “a week of chaos on the streets of Britain” starting with “a plot to ‘shut down’ the London Stock Exchange”, which raises billions in the sale of bonds for the state of Israel. The piece also included a photo of Middleborough, and stated he was “the ringleader”.

While Middleborough does not deny that he planned to take direct action, the charge against him came to nothing: in March, the case against him was “discontinued”. But by this point, he’d already been arrested, remanded in prison, paid a £5,000 bail fee and faced restrictive bail conditions. He’d also had his photo plastered all over the press, and had people online claim he was a “terrorist” who should be “imprisoned for life”.

“It was a modern-day equivalent of a public flogging,” he said.

‘A double whammy.’

Middleborough’s experience is an example of a pernicious phenomenon taking place amidst a wider crackdown on peaceful protest in the UK. In recent months, reporters for tabloid newspapers have not only infiltrated and exposed the plans of various non-violent direct action groups, but collaborated with police, leading to the arrest of activists.

Infiltration of leftwing movements is hardly new. The ongoing spycops inquiry has revealed that between 1968 and 2010, at least 139 undercover officers spied on over 1,000 political (mainly progressive) groups, deceiving women into long-term sexual relationships and in some cases fathering children.

But activists with groups who have recently experienced infiltration say there are aspects of intrusions by undercover reporters that feel uniquely violating.

Huda Ammori is a co-founder of Palestine Action. “If a cop infiltrates you, they’re not gonna go around and put your name all over the internet and all over the press,” she told Novara Media. “But when a journalist does it, they have anything you’ve ever said to them, […] they can put it all over the internet, all over the press, and they’re gonna have the cops on you.

“It’s a double whammy. So in a sense, it’s worse.”

The Express is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) Code. It’s a basic principle of journalism that journalists are open and transparent in how they go about their reporting. It’s another that individuals have a “reasonable expectation of privacy”.

However, according to the code, a newspaper may be justified in subterfuge or exposing certain details about an individual if it can clearly demonstrate that its investigation is in the public interest – for example, if the individual is suspected of being about to break the law, even if the evidence doesn’t end up leading to a conviction.

But whether or not the Express investigation was ethical is another question. For Aidan White, president of the Ethical Journalism Network and former general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, the harm done to Middleborough’s reputation in this case was inexcusable.

“An individual who has not been found to have broken the law […] has been subjected to potential public harassment as a result of exposure by a journalist who is undermining civil liberties.

“That exposure not only gives journalism a bad name – it’s the sort of journalism that does real damage.”

Not all of those activists outed by undercover reporters have been so lucky as to have their court cases discontinued, however.

Most recently, five Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists – including the group’s co-founder Roger Hallam – received the longest sentences for peaceful climate protest in British history after being found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25 on evidence passed to the police by a reporter for the Sun.

In November 2022, Scarlet Howes joined and secretly recorded a Zoom call in which JSO activists discussed the organisation of the action. Howes’ recordings later formed key evidence against the defendants, and she testified in court as a witness for the prosecution. Following receipt of the recordings, the police also exclusively invited the Sun to witness Hallam’s arrest.

Indigo Rumbelow is a JSO activist who spoke to Novara Media in July, shortly before being remanded to prison in relation to a separate wave of action. She highlighted the importance of evidence gathered by journalists in convictions – which in this case led to sentences the UN’s rapporteur for environmental defenders described as “shockingly disproportionate”.

“I’m sure there’s police infiltration [within JSO],” Rumbelow said. “But the police, if they have information, want to keep it on the down-low.

“The stuff that makes it into the court cases as evidence is when the press have infiltrated, and handed that information to the police.”

Back-scratching.

The benefits of these kinds of collaborations for both tabloid reporters and police forces are clear. Reporters get stories, and to look like they’ve “foiled” “plots” by people they’ve trained their readers to hate. The police are seen to be doing something about pesky protesters, and with greater reach than their press offices might otherwise achieve.

These interests can lead both parties to claim they’ve disrupted bigger “plots” by protesters than they have – and in some cases fabricate them altogether. In 2023, the Mail on Sunday ran a frontpage story which implied that “eco-activists” and republicans were behind a “vile plot” to use rape alarms to scare horses on Coronation Day. A follow-up piece reported that police had arrested three “militant activists” the night before the procession.

The truth of the “plot” was rather different: while a small, hard-right Twitter account had urged protesters to bring rape alarms to the Coronation, “eco-zealots” had no such plan, and those arrested with alarms weren’t protesters at all, but nighttime safety volunteers.

Activists who spoke to Novara Media also raised concerns about a “revolving door” between journalism and the police, exemplified by Chris Greenwood, the Met’s current head of media who was previously the Daily Mail’s chief crime correspondent.

For White, the blurring of lines between journalists and police officers is often “highly dubious activity in ethical terms”.

“Reporters being given privileged access by the police as a sort of reward for […] being a police source” – as with the Sun witnessing Hallam’s arrest – is “egregious” and a marker of “an unhealthy relationship” between journalism and the police, he said.

“Over the years, the power of the state to influence journalists has grown, and the capacity of journalists to resist interference has diminished,” he continued. “The reasons are the lack of resources and capacity […] within journalism to carry out the sort of investigations […] that are necessary to hold power to account.”

Heavy vetting.

For political movements, the challenge is to balance the need to plan actions securely with being open enough to engage potential activists.

Different groups have different approaches here. Ammori said that Palestine Action has tightened up its vetting procedures since the Express infiltration.

“One of the drawbacks [of heavy vetting] is that you’re going to get less people,” she said. “But for Palestine Action, it’s about getting the right people involved.”

JSO, meanwhile, has always prioritised open and “accountable” organising, and there not being much to infiltrate in the first place.

“We can’t drive ourselves underground, as that would mean other normal people who want to join our movement couldn’t access it,” Rumbelow said.

This is in part about growing the movement, she said, and partly a “strategic move” following the spycops scandal, when “undercover cops literally obliterated [the climate movement of the early 2000s] by sowing so much distrust”.

But one activist said JSO was more aware of the seriousness of conspiracy charges now – and that there had been successful efforts to stop journalists from “getting too embedded in action teams”.

Ammori called for greater cross-movement knowledge-sharing to weed out reporters who’ve made infiltrating multiple groups their mission. But as it stands, when journalists do cross lines and act unethically, there’s little way to hold them to account.

“There isn’t a process in place where people who are engaged in legitimate activities can actually take action against journalists and media who do them damage,” White said.

Neither the Express nor the Sun responded to Novara Media’s request for comment.