A raft of leading national and international organisations who campaign for press freedom and transparency have condemned the British government’s “Trumpian tactics” to gag and exclude openDemocracy and other British media outlets.
Last week, we revealed that Downing Street had banned openDemocracy from asking direct questions about the government’s pandemic response during the daily televised briefing from Number 10. We now understand this was on the direct orders of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings.
Over the weekend, Number 10 sought to dismiss news stories about Boris Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings by saying they came from “campaigning newspapers” – the same language it had used to justify excluding openDemocracy from the televised daily COVID-19 press briefings.
