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3 I
gu
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Gallow and me gatri the
canary was historically taken by miners
into the bowels of the earth while they
dug perilously for coal if the canary
fell over in its cage it meant something
noxious was present and the miners were
in grave danger ever since the canary in
the mine has been a metaphor for truth
tell tellers in a dangerous world it is
fitting therefore that by far the best
new arrival in Britain's online
journalism is the canary every day it is
breaking the stories that the noxious
don't want us to know I'm happy to say
it's co-founder and editorinchief keran
Mendoza joins us now on board the
Sputnik keran first of all I take my now
absent hat off to you the canary is my
goto I I go to it before anything else
in the morning it's a fantastic success
tell us how it began whose idea it was
and what you hope to achieve with it so
it started to be honest as a
conversation at a party I'd been writing
the script tonight daily blog for five
years by that point and we'd grown it to
about quarter of a million readers a
month wow um and you know we were
bemoaning the fact that you know so much
of the mainstream media has become
dominated by painfully narrow window of
opinion essentially if it's not
neoliberal it's not going to happen um
we were saying you know what if you had
an alternative media Outlet which was
able to air those different opinions and
speak in a human language that normal
people everyday people speak um and and
actually start to compete with those
mainstream media Outlets so that's
that's what we did well it's e there's
never been a better time to be a
journalist but there's never been a
worse time to get paid for it uh how do
the economics of it work I mean are you
all working for nothing or what
absolutely not and this was really
crucial for us when we set up was to
address the fact that most of fleet
Fleet stre actually operates on the back
of unpaid labor you know you have these
unpaid internships that benefit
essentially middle class students you
know graduates which parents can pay for
them to live in a London apartment for
two years while they work unpaid and it
prejudices against all of the other
types of people that might want to go
into journalism so what we wanted to do
was actually Peg everybody's income from
myself through to the newest writer to
the overall financial success of the
canary so we've got a revenue share
model which means we divide the profits
between the writers they get the line
share which is 50% and the rest is split
between the editorial team and ongoing
costs and how are the numbers growing I
mean I I became first aware of it I
don't know certainly in the last 6
months uh and now I'm your most regular
reader or one of your most regular
readers uh what kind of growth have you
experienced it's been pretty exponential
if we keep going the way we are I mean
in July we overtook The Spectator new
Statesman The Economist these are
established fantas know these are been
around for more than a century big money
yeah and that's the real crucial thing
these these organizations have you know
millionaire billionaire backing they
have the um you know the money of big
corporations flooding into their um
coffers we don't you know we set this up
on an absolute shoestring we didn't want
to be funded by any Corporation State
individual or organization so that
everything we write is because we
believe it it's because we find evidence
and we want to report it to people it's
not because anyone's paying us any money
to do it or any loyalties that we feel
to any political group or or other group
and that gives us an astonishing level
of of editorial Freedom um because we
don't owe anybody anything um and that
was really really important to us to
maintain our independence and we plan to
keep
doing that and to go from the only
people I think I can say the only people
who are telling the truth about the
labor leadership Race For example yeah
not because you are slavish uh
supporters of Corbin but because you're
telling the truth you're you're you're
not falsifying twisting distorting and
even making up I mean 50% of all
political journalism in this country I
can tell you after nor nearly 30 years
in Parliament is simply made up yeah
somebody said something to somebody in a
bar and it's then written so that's what
that that has helped your uh cause I
think it really has people are turning
to you for I think we have a level of
trust with our readers and that's
reflected in our growing membership
because our goal was always to be reader
funded ultimately but we were an unknown
quantity when we began so we couldn't
ask people to fund us from the get-go so
we've been growing our readership
growing our membership through this year
we've now got over 2,000 paying
subscribers and these people are not
paying for paywall Content they're not
paying for
a something they please include me
you've got 2001 oh amazing because I'm
reading it for free and that's not
really fair uh because there's no
corporates there's no advertising
there's uh although by the way what
about this The Huffington Post was for a
small period an alternative go-to place
and then of course it became just
another corporate
and it's politics have followed suit
it's just another part of the big lie
machine yeah how are you going to avoid
that fit well we've kind of bootstrapped
our morality in place so one thing we
have is that I have no say on the
business side of the canary and the
business side has no control at all over
the editorial so we put a firewall in
place which means those
two don't talk to each other and we run
democratically so for example all of our
writers are members of the national
Union of journalists we're not
impervious we're not perfect human
beings so we wanted to empower our
writers I think we're also probably the
only Newsroom in Britain whose writers
voted unanimously in favor of their pay
deal anyone sued you
yet um no I think we had one angry
letter from lawyers um when we we were
actually the first UK media organization
that got into return marketing um and
began the discussion about push polling
um and election fraud expenses um
Scandal that is breaking and we've got
lots more to come on that um but we're
happy to take those risks no this uh is
an to continue the mining metaphor this
is a virtually untapped
scene uh seam rather the the extent to
which uh polling is actually now being
used to create outcomes rather than to
measure likely outcomes uh the method of
questioning the timing of polls timing
of release and so on uh in order to to
create a desired outcome on the part of
the person paying for the for the poll
completely just a suggestion for future
investigation um the form online only
online that's the future isn't it I mean
the the days of glossy uh magazines
except in very Niche form is over
absolutely that's our aim that's one
thing we wanted to do another angle that
we took was we operate an online virtual
Newsroom so so there's no vanity office
you know where you know where we're you
know we're overlooking beautiful scenes
we've got a virtual online Newsroom
where all the writers can see each other
um every story goes through six
editorial Gates which all of the other
writers can see so every single story
that gets published by us is actually
the collective input skill and talent of
the entire Newsroom and not many news
rooms operate that way and a lot of the
feedback we get from the writers
especially those who've worked in the
the established traditional media is
I've never worked in an environment
where people cooperated like this this
is new you know normally they're
guarding their stories you know with
dear life and you know nicking other
people's stories actually quite a brutal
hostile environment normally journalism
and you know we really identify as a
team and people help each other with
their stories we want each other to win
and we win or lose together in every
respect now uh you're a poacher now but
you formerly were a gamekeeper uh tell
the viewers this remarkable Journey that
you have yeah so I actually you know my
career began in um in banking of all
places and you know I went on from B you
know banking to be a Management
Consultant and I've run multi-million
pound projects across the public and
private sector including you know
working on the development of Hanley
Point C which is the new nuclear Bill
project in Somerset so I'm not some
young naive um you know kind of Lefty
who's always been involved in politics
I've been out in the real world and I've
I've been a part of these business
operations and seen the way um that they
have a fairly chilling Toxic effect on
Dem y on our environment um and on the
way that we approach each other as human
beings and that's what really drove me
to change and very much kind of came
through the Israel Palestine um kind of
situation too and in 2014 I've been
traveling out there and Reporting from
Palestine for 15 years um now even while
I was a banker I was I was doing that
and in 2014 when operation protective
Edge was happening my readers on script
tonight daily actually crowdfunded me to
go to Gaza while operation protective
Edge was happen I'm
report I was in Gaza for for sort of 3
four weeks while operation protective
Edge was was unfolding and and you know
you can't see those things
2,341 people were being killed almost uh
500 of them uh children of course well
um our guest last week also was was yes
banking is turning out to be quite a
factory to become I salute that finally
you have written a book uh called aity
uh the demolition of the welfare state
and the rise of the zombie economy I
love that title zombie economy tell us a
bit about it because you mentioned it
AUST austerity being something like fig
Leaf it really is you know austerity is
not temporary and it's not necessary
this is a project that has been taking
place around the world um since the end
of World War II really and you know what
you can do what are the drawbacks really
in in journalism when you're doing daily
stories is you can only ever give people
a small glimpse sure you know a single
glimpse of a single issue and what I
wanted to do with the book was tell this
story um of this journey of austerity
from the way it impacted the continent
of Africa Latin America and then arrived
on the shores of Europe in 2008 um and
the shores of Britain in
2010 um and it it really is a hostile
takeover you know this is what we're
seeing it's a sort almost like a an
economic coup d'a you know where they
don't come with with guns and bombs they
come with you know finan
derivatives um and reorient economies
away from making things inventing things
to just supplying financiers through
gambling yeah it's just gambling who
published that book new internationalist
new international I saw you talking
about it on on channel 4 news I think uh
on one of the news programs anyway it
was truly outstanding so finally uh we
can get your book from new
internationalist just tell people how
they read the canary you you can find
the canary online it's www.the
canary.com and there's no UK or com um
and we're there everyday producing
stories um from the moment you wake up
to the moment you go to sleep you'll see
our stories going up online and we've
got a Facebook page and Twitter account
so do follow us it's a must keran
mandosa thanks for joining us on board
the Sputnik coming up next what can
happen to whistleblowers when they upset
the rich and Powerful the director of
the film we Distributors joins us after
the
break welcome back to Sputnik no less
than General Dwight Eisenhower Allied
Commander in World War II and two-term
president of the United States warned in
his valedictory address of the
burgeoning power of the military
industrial complex those who profit
mightily from Wars are of course rather
keen on more and new conflicts how to
keep a grip on them is an art not much
perfected by Western leaders or perhaps
they just had reasons for not wanting to
the brilliant new British film
redistributors goes to dark dangerous
yet increasingly familiar places its
director Adrien Tanner joins us now on
the Sputnik Adrian congratulations on
the film I hope it's a fantastic success
tell us the story and how and why you
came to make it uh well I was a lifelong
lover of Thrillers and particularly The
Thrillers of the 70s like three days of
the Condor The Parallax view um uh
silkwood and other great conspiracy
theory films and what was always
interesting to me is that they tended to
have a bit of a leftwing message behind
them the little guy against the
government or the corporation or the
establishment so I wanted to follow in
those footsteps with this film but I
also thought that in a British context
where guns are still against the law it
was a bit hard to imagine one of those
extreme American scenarios and how would
you find an ordinary London girl in a
position where she was actually facing
matters of life or death and I thought
if she was a PR girl at a military
supply company then she might be in some
real danger if they happen to call in
some ex- soldiers who might have had
connections with them to come after her
and in the film it kicks off with a
scandal where their equipment has been
proven to have led to the deaths of
soldiers in Iraq and uh she's the one
accused of leaking that so she goes on
the run and she hides with her brother
who's a protester and an anti-
capitalist hacker part of this group
called The redistributors Who she meets
and learns about and learns to Value
what they stand for it's an all too
plausible script if you ask me you
you'll have to go fast to keep up with
reality of course these uh kinds of
stories are as I say all too plausible
and it's already a big success yeah
you've won the best supporting actress
uh award uh in a category that included
uh some really big stars tell us about
that well yeah we won a national film
award back in April I think and Samuel L
Jackson won the the male equivalent so
that was a massive surprise and a real
boost to the film and uh we've done a
few festivals already the film's sort of
on a released soon nationally um and
we're hoping to to build on these little
little bits of publicity and success to
get to the film in front of more people
and of course every filmmaker's dream is
that it plays on the big screen which uh
an expensive process to to get underway
but we're hoping we have a chance of
that now these films of the 70s that you
quote uh uh particularly for me three
days of the Condor uh were epic and
helped shape uh political perceptions
for Millions maybe far more than
millions of people around the world what
would be the message that the
redistributors movie uh wants primarily
to send well the film was eight years in
the making and eight years in the
writing and during that period I
witnessed occupy and the financial crash
and I witnessed the student protests of
2011 I think a pivotal moment in our
history that's perhaps not been expanded
maybe there's a movie to be made is when
that student threw the fire extinguisher
off the roof of the Milbank Tower and
perhaps in that one act he led a
generation of young politicized
protesters to stay at home their parents
probably phoned up and said look we
don't want you going on any more of
these protests it was an incredibly
stupid thing to do it was unfortunate a
moment of Madness I think he said in
court but really quite a significant
political historical moment and for me
at that time the film was you know was
bubbling under and and I really wanted
to make a film that spoke to that
generation of younger student protesters
and perhaps dealt with what the future
of their political lives might be which
is now much more likely staying at home
doing it online because they're scared
of getting out on the streets this uh
world of hacking and Anonymous and uh
all these other groups that do stay at
home uh but nonetheless make a a big
contribution to blowing
whistles uh is that a significant part
of the film yeah I mean there's a
there's a level of wish fulfillment in
the film and and I hope a level of uh
prediction which is that Anonymous was a
a very scattergun movement and in it
Inception some of the people involved by
their very nature were quite uh
antisocial types who who stayed at home
they had some very strange whims in the
early days uh that one of the early
actions of anonymous was to post
flashing gifs on the a forum for
epileptics which induced epileptic fits
which was done sort of in the name of
anonymous so they've done some pretty
weird things and they've lacked well
being anonymous anyone can claim that
they are of anous yeah and and there's
there's that so so I I kind of Rebrand
them as the redistributors in this film
aonomus Heroes and of course their
activity is much more targeted much more
political but there's an inherent
Democratic side to it because when you
hack mostly you use a denial of service
uh uh technique which which blocks
websites by sending a large amount of
traffic to them which is what Anonymous
do and they've done it in some very good
places and very effectively and they're
trying to do it to to das now and and
other things but um uh in the film the
idea is that you you can't really do
this without a democratic support of a
lot of people you share an app which you
have on your computer and you don't
really need to be a a total nerd with
lots of technical knowledge you simply
down download an app put it on your
computer and then share it around a lot
of people and if all of you are hitting
the same Target at the same time you can
bring about real change and this is how
it happens um in the film we speculate
that this might actually start dealing
with the vast amounts of hidden wealth
and tax evasion wealth in the country by
taking it out of accounts in a Robin
Hood way and redistributing it to where
it's needed so the film targets the city
the bankers The Establishment did you
have any resistance in any way um in
making the film uh coming from that
corner and can you please tell us a bit
more about how the film was made well
yeah the film was uh uh low budget and
luckily I didn't have any friends in the
city with money so luckily I can claim
that uh I didn't receive tax evasion
money or tax avoidance money but the the
tax breaks for film are very lucrative
and there have been a lot of scandals
recently in fact just coming to light
with quite a few schemes where film is
one of the the main sort of areas of tax
evasion in fact and it's been misused
arguably there is a value to it and I'm
sure the the mainstream industry is very
thankful for I think Gordon Brown's sort
of tax breaks and various others that
make it possible but in this case the
film was made with independent money and
a lot of favors and a lot of youngsters
with energy and Good Will and a lot of
Innovations I think that I'm very proud
of to do with the technology and the
method of filming that made it possible
to make a film on a very low budget
things like filming in public without
needing to get permissions and C an off
air areas um filming with very small
cameras that could be moved around very
easily and uh doing so with a pretty
small crew I actually shot the film
myself and directed it so you know I
saved on a lot of clobber and Manpower
by doing that um and that's the future
isn't it we I mean the technology is
advancing at such a rate that the costs
of entry into making a film where once
you had to be a multi-millionaire to
make a movie now People Like Us can make
a movie it's not easy and you do have to
put up some of your own money but with a
bit of Goodwill you can get it back I
hope so I mean of course there's a
danger that that that our work will be
downloaded for free by people and uh
that's a reality we have to sort of live
with but um I think yeah getting it out
there being able to do it in a cottage
industry way being able to do it without
a kind of corporate backing is great and
uh gives a voice to a lot of people I
think that the downside of that is that
that a lot of people are entering into
this space without enough coherence to
their scripts and their message um and
there there is a a lot of noise in in
the film world at the moment but I think
um I hope this film has has a strong
enough story to carry it through well
you know when a thousand flowers are
allowed to bloom of course some weeds uh
grow too but that's better than a world
where the world I grew up in where big
Hollywood Studios more or less decided
Which films were ever going to be made
now over a cup of coffee after this
interview we could plan both of our next
movies absolutely and uh as long as I
think we put in the dedicated paperwork
to to making a coherent written piece
that the the film grows from I think it
there's every chance of success I think
that that it is I have kids now who are
starting to make films at 11 years old
but they rush into it without they can
get the technology they can shoot it on
their phones but they need a script and
they need a reason and I think I'm I'm
very glad that redistributors is quite a
political film because when you're
working on something for what's now been
nearly 10 years you have to have a
purpose and a reason to carry you
through and for me very luckily a lot of
what the film's about has become more
and more topical as the process
production going on the that that proves
quite a significant uh reality that
although uh in the end everything
Remains the Same the issues are the same
they have a different form uh but the
content is the same and the content is
that the world is ruled by Rich and
powerful people who are mainly
interested in becoming ever more rich
and powerful and if that means the
complete abandonment of all morality and
ethics if everything sacred to quote
marks uh is to be
profaned uh then that obtains 10 years
ago today and 10 years from now
presumably yes and the and as a thriller
redistributors is conventional enough to
embrace that in the way that those
classic films of the 70s do and uh we
deal with corruption we deal with money
and we we're dealing with it in a a
military context where you can well
imagine that when a company with many
shareholders who's been making its money
supplying weaponry and Technology to the
battlefield is threatened they have
people on speed dial who you wouldn't
want coming around your house so that's
what happens in it's a fantastic movie
Adrien tunner thanks for making it and
thanks for coming on board the Sputnik
thanks for having
[Music]
me and now it's your turn to tell us
what you think through the portals of
social media what's rattling G Tre so
the rise of alternative media does that
actually mean that the traditional media
is dying Philip Hutchinson says
traditional right-wing media is dying
that's for sure we do not have to eat
the they serve up dying but not dead uh
and sometimes we overestimate the extent
to which it is near death uh so of
course all power to the New Media but
don't imagine that the old media doesn't
still have a very powerful position just
listen to Phil I haven't bought a
newspaper for years it's wonderful to
dispense with the self appointed
Gatekeepers sure uh but the newspapers
still come out and they lead the
broadcasters and the main broadcasters
are still the mainstream live machine
that's all the tweets for today which
alas means that's the end of the show
you can stay in touch with us on social
media on Twitter at rtor Sputnik or on
Facebook sputnic on Russia today it's
goodbye from me gatri and from me George
Galloway it's been
[Music]
marvelous