UK Journalist Wins £80k Damages after Being Hired ‘to Smear’ UAE and Egypt Critics

A journalist has been awarded more than £80,000 in damages against a London-based investigative website and its CEO – a press freedom campaigner – after claiming she was duped into joining the organisation only to find out it was a propaganda vehicle for the UAE and Egypt.
Jane Cahane said she was told in her job interview by Mohamed Fahmy, who was imprisoned in Egypt for more than a year for disseminating “false news” in a case that caused a public outcry, that the Investigative Journal (TIJ) was a publication of independent investigative journalism.

But Cahane, who was editor-in-chief between December 2018 and July 2019, said she believed TIJ received funding from the UAE and pursued an agenda intended to further the interests of the Gulf state and Egypt.

Cahane had previously worked on the travel website Culture Trip and the renewable energy news title Recharge before joining TIJ.

Her particulars of claim said her job description at the TIJ stated she would “work with leading journalists and a team of editors to help create and manage a top-tier, investigative online publication”. But she said the reality was different. “At no time has TIJ covered, nor did the defendants intend TIJ to cover, a wide range of topics and a diversity of viewpoints from an independent and objective standpoint,” the document stated.

“Articles, reports and social media content published by TIJ have focused and focus primarily on aggressively targeting, attacking and smearing those perceived to be opponents of the United Arab Emirates and the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Source: The Guardian