Financial Times deleted gold manipulation story because it was too 'sensitive'

2:33p ET Monday, July 28, 2014

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

With great persistence and a little encouragement from GATA our friend R.B. in Britain has more or less solved the mystery of the Financial Times' quick deletion from its Internet site of its February 24 report about gold market manipulation, "Fears Over Gold Price Rigging Put Investors on Alert; German and UK Regulators Investigate."

The report has been preserved at GATA's Internet site here --

http://www.gata.org/node/13681

-- and at Zero Hedge's here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-25/here-fts-gold-price-manipulatio...

The explanation is pretty much what one might expect: For the Financial Times, one of the many news organizations to which GATA repeatedly has provided its full documentation of gold price suppression by Western central banks --

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

-- the issue is simply too "sensitive."

In fairness to the FT, please note that the issue seems to have been too "sensitive" for all those other news organizations as well.

R.B.'s account of his repeated inquiries to the Financial Times is appended.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

In February an informative article headlined "Gold Price Rigging Fears Put Investors on Alert" by Madison Marriage appeared in the Financial Times' print edition and was posted on the newspaper's Internet site. Within hours it was removed from the FT's Internet site without explanation.

A message that replaced the article on the FT's Internet site invited readers to contact the newspaper's Customer Services department with any queries, so I telephoned the newspaper to ask why the story had been removed.

I was told by the help desk that the story had been withdrawn by the editorial team for a reason that was not yet known.

So that I might get an explanation when one was available, I e-mailed my question to the help desk four times in the next nine weeks, from February 27 to April 30, after which I finally received an e-mail reply stating that my query had been assigned a case number and that the help desk would attempt to respond within 24 hours.

As I still received no response, over the next 11 weeks I sent additional e-mails, which were forwarded to the editorial team and finally to its senior management.

My persistence for nearly five months was then partly rewarded when I was told by the Customer Services office in a telephone call that the article had been withdrawn from the FT's Internet site because its subject was "a sensitive matter" but that the editorial team could provide no further details.

-- R.B., United Kingdom.