FIRED.....Trevino
reportedly called a Gaza flotilla a ‘Nazi convoy’.
KUALA LUMPUR : British
newspaper The Guardian has terminated the services of conservative American
columnist Joshua Trevino as its United States correspondent over his alleged
relationship with a company implicated in a news-fixing campaign financed by
the Malaysian government and for running a website that attacked Datuk Seri
Anwar Ibrahim and other opposition interests here.
In a short statement issued
over the weekend, the newspaper said it had recent learned that Trevino “was a
consultant for an agency that had Malaysian business interests and that he ran
a website called Malaysia Matters. In keeping with the Guardian’s editorial
code this should have been disclosed.”
Trevino had recently been hired
by The Guardian to be its conservative columnist in the United States. His
appointment drew a firestorm of protests from liberal activists after it
emerged he had urged Israel to shoot at the humanitarian flotilla in 2011 that
was seeking to break its naval blockade of Gaza.
When boats carrying unarmed
civilian activists attempted in June 2011 to break the blockade of Gaza,
Treviño tweeted out a message to the Israeli army: “Dear IDF: If you end up
shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla — well, most Americans are cool
with that. Including me.”
Trevino also reportedly
called the flotilla a “Nazi convoy.”
The Guardian made no mention
of the criticisms, but instead pointed to Trevino’s previous ties with an
“agency” it did not name but is alleged to be FBC Media, the now-defunct
company at the centre of the Malaysia news-fixing scandal involving broadcasters
BBC and CNBC last year.
“Under our guidelines, the
relationship between Joshua and the agency should have been disclosed before
the piece was published in order to give full clarity to our readers,” said
Janine Gibson, editor-in-chief, Guardian US.
In response Trevino said: “I
vigorously affirm that nothing unethical was done and I have been open with the
Guardian in this matter. Nevertheless, the Guardian’s guidelines are
necessarily broad, and I agree that they must be respected as such.”
Trevino is a well-known
conservative commentator and a former speechwriter in the President George W.
Bush administration.
He has reported extensively
in the past few years on Anwar’s Sodomy II trial on his Malaysia Matters
website, which is now defunct.
Trevino had also frequently
criticised Anwar in his other columns in other publications such as the
Huffington Post.
FBC Media, the company
alleged to have been referred to by The Guardian, made eight programmes for the
BBC about Malaysia while failing to declare it was paid £17 million (RM85
million) by the Malaysian government for “global strategic communications”
which included positive coverage of Malaysia’s controversial palm oil industry.
The BBC also used FBC to
make a documentary about the spring uprising in Egypt without knowing the firm
was paid to do PR work for the regime of former dictator Hosni Mubarak.
The BBC was forced to make a
public apology over the matter.
FBC had also been exposed to
have doubled up as a publicity firm for the Najib government and was paid
millions of pounds to conduct a “Global Strategic Communications Campaign”.
But Putrajaya last year
ended its RM94 million contract with FBC, which started in 2007, after it was
revealed Malaysian government leaders regularly appeared in paid-for-TV
programmes.
The Malaysian Insider has
reported of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak contracting a series of
public relations strategists, including APCO Worldwide, to polish his personal
image and his government’s locally and worldwide.
Late last year the
government said image consultants FBC Media helped raise the standing of
Malaysia as a tourism and investment destination during the RM94 million
three-year deal that began in 2007.
Minister in the Prime
Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz told Parliament that the
London-based media company, which is facing bankruptcy, “supported the efforts
of government leaders and ministers” to burnish the country’s image overseas.
No comments:
Post a Comment