CLIMATE activists who blockaded media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Hertfordshire printworks last month began their plea hearings in St Albans today. 

The action by 51 Extinction Rebellion (XR) members disrupted the distribution of newspapers including The Sun, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Twenty four activists appeared at St Albans Magistrates Court today, with a further 26 due to attend Tuesday and Thursday. 

All defendants are charged with obstruction of the highway and most are expected to plead not guilty. 

If found guilty, the maximum penalty is £1,000, but first-time offenders are likely to receive a £200 fine.

Defendants include several teachers, a grandparent, a former City broker, an electrician, an engineer and an ex-journalist.

Defendant Gully Bujack, 27, said:  “A free press is vital to the functioning of a democracy, and we do not have a free press in this country. 

“Five billionaires control the news consumed by roughly 70 per cent of the newspaper-reading population in Britain. These individuals decide what to print based on their own personal and political agendas. 

“They consistently fail to accurately and adequately report on the climate and ecological emergency, they actively spread lies and misinformation in order to sow fear and hatred of marginalised groups, and they manipulate national conversations on crucial issues to serve their own aims.”

Media Lens told the Star: “The propaganda message against XR activists has been relentless across much of the ‘mainstream media,’ epitomised by the empty rhetoric of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“As Media Lens has demonstrated over the past 20 years, it is the state-corporate media, including BBC News and the Guardian, that has endlessly ‘limited the public’s access to news’ by denying the public the full truth about climate breakdown and its root causes in corporate-driven capitalism; as well as hiding the truth about British-US warmongering, the insidious prising open of the NHS to private interests, and numerous other issues of vital importance.

“XR is performing a valuable public service in drawing attention to the real nature of the state-corporate media which, in advancing private interests over the public, is essentially promoting a path towards global species-loss, including human extinction.”