Comment: Why It's Too Soon for Newspapers to Claim Gatwick Disruption is the Fault of an 'Eco-Warrior'

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Many newspapers this morning have speculated that the current chaos at Gatwick airport is down to an โ€œeco-warriorโ€. Their basis for this claim? Almostย nothing.

The Telegraphโ€™s frontpage reads โ€œEnvironmental protestors suspected of orchestrating Gatwick drone chaosโ€. The Times has an article headlined โ€œGatwick chaos: Eco-warriors may be behind disruptionโ€, and The Sun declares that the โ€œhunt continuesโ€ for โ€œeco-warrior droneย pilotโ€.

So thatโ€™s three of the UKโ€™s biggest newspapers, including its most widely circulated, making the connection between this mass disruption and โ€œecoโ€ย activists.

Even the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, mentioned this theory on the BBC‘s flagship current affairsย programme.

So surely, they must all have a strong basis for reportingย this?

No.

The Sun says simply that โ€œcops were working on the theory that a lone eco-activist wasย responsibleโ€.

The Telegraph attributes this theory to โ€œa Whitehall sourceโ€ who says โ€œan eco-protest is at this stage a definite line ofย inquiryโ€.

The Times doesnโ€™t even attribute the speculation – nowhere in its article does it identify a source (of any kind) saying the responsibility lies with someone to do with the environmentalย community.

In fact, it even notes that โ€œprotestors are usually swift to claim responsibility for the disruption but no group had admitted operating the Gatwick drones by yesterdayย eveningโ€.

Thereโ€™s probably a good reason for this. No sensible environmental campaign would think ruining thousands of peopleโ€™s Christmas holidays (not to mention delaying the delivery of potentially important supplies over the holiday period) is a good way to win people around to theirย cause.

In The Times and Telegraph articles, the campaign groups Extinction Rebellion and Plane Stupid are name-checked along with a description of some of their greatest hits. Just to make sure the point hitsย home.

That’s depsite the fact that Extinction Rebellion has even gone so far as to publicly denyย involvement:

So how on earth has this speculation hit frontย pages?

It seems no coincidence that these statements appear in outlets with a history of climate science denial andย anti-environmentalism.

The police have been regularly quoted as stating that the theory it was someone related to environmental activism operation on their own accord was โ€œone line of enquiryโ€. But the police have also stressed there are โ€œseveral lines ofย enquiryโ€.

Beyond that, the timestamps of the articles offer someย clue.

The Times article was published online at 12.01am on 21 December, The Sunโ€™s at 6am on 21 December, and the Telegraphโ€™s at 9.30pm on 20ย December.

An article by climate science denier columnist James Delingpole for the far-right Breitbart website appears to have gone online at around 3pm on 20ย December.

In that article, Delingpole speculates (and even he acknowledges itโ€™s a speculation) that the Gatwick disruption could have been due to an environmentalย activist.

In his article, heย asks:

โ€œWhat kind of bastards would do such a cruel and heartlessย thing?โ€

โ€œWell the local police appear to be ruling out ‘terror’. (Which is PC code for โ€˜something to do withย Islamโ€™.)โ€

โ€œSo my guess is that it is the work of ecoย loons.โ€

He then goes on to mention the activities of – you guessed it – Extinction Rebellion and Planeย Stupid.

These groups are composed of people who have the โ€œcertain kind of psychopathologyโ€ needed to conduct an act of such disruption, heย argues.

A few hours before, โ€˜Gaia Fawkesโ€™, a wing of the Guido Fawkes political blog set up to attack environmentalism, tweeted:

So, this is what the articles in the UKโ€™s newspapers are based on: speculation from an unamed Whitehall source, speculation from the police, and speculation from alt-right climate scienceย deniers.

We simply donโ€™t know who is responsible for the Gatwick disruption. It could be a โ€œlone wolfโ€ who maybe identifies as an โ€œenvironmentalistโ€. But we donโ€™t knowย that.

And journalists are meant to report facts, notย speculation.

This is at best bad journalism, and at worst something a lot moreย sinister.

Image: Thomasย Katan

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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