James Ball

James Ball   (journalist, Integrity Initiative, British government propagandist)
Nationality	British
Alma mater	City, University of London.
Member of	International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

James Ball is a British journalist and author. He was exposed as having in secret worked for the British intelligence propaganda unit Integrity Initivative . His work as a propagandist for for British spy agencies puts his entire earlier career in a different perspective, and could explain his fast career in major media outlets, speckled with tepid 'scoops' probably fed to him by his intelligence handlers. It also puts his early work for WikiLeaks in a different perspective.

Since starting his career in 2008, he has worked for The Guardian, WikiLeaks (possibly as a mole), BuzzFeed, The New European and The Washington Post and is the author of three books. He is the recipient of several awards for journalism and was a member of The Guardian team which won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

After leaving university and whilst working for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on iraqwarlogs.com, Ball was approached in November 2010 by Julian Assange and invited to work as the in-house journalist for WikiLeaks in the UK where he began working on the Iraq War documents leak. He described his days there as "long and erratic", complicated when a European Arrest Warrant was issued for Assange which lead to extradition proceedings known as the Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority.

Ball left WikiLeaks after three months with a thorough smear job, claiming it was because he became increasingly concerned by the organisation's attempts to censor staff, his own worries regarding protecting the identity of vulnerable individuals in the leaked cables and Assange's attempts to secure WikiLeaks' funds for his own legal defence. In 2012 he co-authored a book with Charlie Beckett documenting his experiences, WikiLeaks: News in the Networked Era.

In 2011 Ball joined British newspaper The Guardian where he worked on several high-profile investigative stories and was given several awards as part of The Guardian team. Whilst working for The Guardian, Ball collaborated on the Offshore Leaks project which won multiple awards. In 2013 he was appointed data editor in the Guardian and from around June 2013 he worked on the Edward Snowden leaked documents on British and US intelligence organizations Government Communications Headquarters and National Security Agency (don't forget the Snowden documents are being kept back by the ones controlling them and only very sparsely released to the public) In October 2013 it was announced that Ball had joined Guardian US, the American online section of the newspaper where he took up the newly created position of special projects editor. In September 2015 Ball joined the UK division of BuzzFeed as part of their investigative journalism team. Ball is a judge for the Amnesty International UK Media Awards.

Ball has received several awards during his career for journalism and investigative journalism including, a 2012 Laurence Stern fellowship winner at The Washington Post, [[The Pulitzer Prize] for Public Service in 2014.