Mail: a truly despicable article ("nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death")

[rollinder]

tell her to write in.

tried that - she just said "you're the one with the email addresses, send a letter from both of us"

 

[DotCommunist]

The thing is, this, in itself changes nothing at all. The Mail doesn't care, they get this every now and then and they just ride it out. They don't get it that often because the magic combination of astoundingly obvious insensitivity, celebrity and mass adoption as an Internet Thing don't coincide that often. They also know that the really offensive stuff they publish never gets that sort of stick because they balance it so that there are enough bigots who will agree; this was just a balance failure on their part, an editor's mistake.

The PCC doesn't care, they get it quite frequently and they're an entirely pointless body which couldn't do anything significant even if it wanted to, which it doesn't. I would say that the only real positive effect that might come out of this is that people realise how completely useless they are.

Well to anybody paying attention the papery tiger nature of the PCC has been obvious for a fucking long time.

If retractions and apologies were forced to be of the same length and word count as original articles, that would be a start. Rather than brief 'sorry lol' tiny chunk just before the adverts for sex lines about GILFS and dickgirls.

Yes I am looking at YOU, The Sun!

s

 

[gosub]

Be fair, not even Offcom do that, BBC2 complaint night after Jerry Springer would have been very strange.

 

[Pie 1]

The thing is, this, in itself changes nothing at all. The Mail doesn't care, they get this every now and then and they just ride it out. They don't get it that often because the magic combination of astoundingly obvious insensitivity, celebrity and mass adoption as an Internet Thing don't coincide that often. They also know that the really offensive stuff they publish never gets that sort of stick because they balance it so that there are enough bigots who will agree; this was just a balance failure on their part, an editor's mistake.

The PCC doesn't care, they get it quite frequently and they're an entirely pointless body which couldn't do anything significant even if it wanted to, which it doesn't. I would say that the only real positive effect that might come out of this is that people realise how completely useless they are.

This.

 

[5t3IIa]

Yeah

*wiggles backwards*

 

[5t3IIa]

Group still growing...

Monday 8.20am - 24,942
Monday 6.30pm - 27,539
Tuesday 8.23am - 29,164
Tuesday 6pm - 30,409
Wednesday 8am - 31,414 (up 2 in the time it took to post this)

 

[5t3IIa]

Still 4th and 5th most read on Graun


4 Charlie Brooker | Why there was nothing 'human' about Jan Moir's column on the death of Stephen Gately
5 Jan Moir: more than 22,000 complain to PCC over Stephen Gately piece

 

[kyser_soze]

I believe that freedom of speech should be balanced by freedom for individuals from all sectors of the community to live their lives without abuse being hurled at them because of their sexuality/race/religion/gender, whether that be face to face, on print, on tv or on the internet.

Ho ho! And who is going to get to decide what constitutes offensive? Would that be offensive by your subjective standard, or by someone elses, say a Christian, a red-red socialist or a conservative Muslim?

The 'free speech must have limits which are nice' argument is bollocks, quite frankly. Sorry.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Could be, google news as a tool is a bit of a blunt instrument


ETA unless you are being facitious - I accept a lot of other news has been happening today, but not enough for every news desk to have moved away.

I could be wrong, but think it is a position worth considering

Oh, I see what you mean I think; no, there aren't many articles about Jan Moir. That's hardly "gone very quiet" - why would there be? People get angry about awful Mail story, Mail doesn't retract story, PCC does nothing - it's not news. The only reason it was there in the first place really is because of the use of Twitter and the novelty of that will wear off soon.

 

[newbie]

yes, i think it's very important that writers are free to publish stuff which causes offence

of course it's equally important that those offended should bite back.

far better people are offended and respond in kind than there are restrictions on the causing of offence- whether through the rich using libel to silence critics or the religious citing blasphemy or issuing a fatwah or some sort of censorship on the grounds of taste.

 

[kyser_soze]

yes, i think it's very important that writers are free to publish stuff which causes offence

of course it's equally important that those offended should bite back.

far better people are offended and respond in kind than there are restrictions on the causing of offence- whether through the rich using libel to silence critics or the religious citing blasphemy or issuing a fatwah or some sort of censorship on the grounds of taste.

Exactly - the importance is in the ability to have the discourse itself. Reformation of the libel laws, and some form of compulsion to print answerback/make a big deal out of apologies on the part of newspapers would be a good way of re-balancing things, and also ensuring that no one can claim their voice isn't heard.

As I said - it's the bikers revving their engines against Phelps and the Westboro Baptists.

 

[Badger Kitten]

Oh, I see what you mean I think; no, there aren't many articles about Jan Moir. That's hardly "gone very quiet" - why would there be? People get angry about awful Mail story, Mail doesn't retract story, PCC does nothing - it's not news. The only reason it was there in the first place really is because of the use of Twitter and the novelty of that will wear off soon.

And the ads pulling. Don't forget the ads pulling. That put the wind up their sails.

You might be interested in this Graun article FridgeMagnet

The Moir case, on the other hand, illustrates how little accountability there is at some newspapers. If you were offended and wanted to complain, what options did you have? The Daily Mail has no readers' editor, and no formal complaints process that is publicly accessible in the newspaper or on its website. The only reference to the PCC on Mail Online is not linked to from any other page on the site and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, invisible. This is a newspaper whose editor is the chair of the PCC's editorial code committee and who sits on the PCC's appointments and funding body, Pressbof. Yet his newspaper lacks the most basic public accountability mechanisms.

And, if you escalated your complaint to the PCC, as thousands did, you would probably find yourself equally dissatisfied at the outcome. This is not the fault of the PCC's secretariat, who are diligently working their way through the largest number of complaints over one article in their history. Rather it is due to the rules that artificially limit the complaints they can accept, and the limited sanctions available to them. All 22,000 of these complaints can, according to the rules laid down by the industry, be rejected – since they are considered "third party complaints" (complaints not made by someone directly referenced in the article). In this case, the PCC has said it will consider the complaints and write to the Daily Mail for a response. However, when that response is a small apology tucked inside the paper, many will feel the Daily Mail has got off considerably more lightly than, say, the BBC after the Ross/Brand affair.

This means you are left with the wisdom of the crowd – also known as mob justice. It seem appropriate and proportionate when you happen to agree with it, as in this case, but will seem decidedly unjust if you disagree.

Unless newspapers take more responsibility for their own content, give people the opportunity to complain and respond adequately to those complaints, then they – and their journalists – will come under increasing criticism and attack from the blogosphere, the Twitterverse and other social media. Similarly, unless news organisations protest about the misuse of injunctions, actions such as Trafigura's will become even more difficult to prevent. We do not want to find ourselves in a situation where free speech is constrained by expensive lawyers, nor one where it is dictated by the mob

.

 

[danny la rouge]

Ho ho! And who is going to get to decide what constitutes offensive? Would that be offensive by your subjective standard, or by someone elses, say a Christian, a red-red socialist or a conservative Muslim?

The 'free speech must have limits which are nice' argument is bollocks, quite frankly. Sorry.

Fuck. I just lost a long post expanding upon this. I'm going to have a coffee and decide whether I can be bothered recreating it.

 

[quimcunx]

tried that - she just said "you're the one with the email addresses, send a letter from both of us"

''And another thing, My Mum says you should wash that little madam's mouth out with soap....''

 

[danny la rouge]

OK, here goes.

There are people on both sides getting needlessly confused about this.

Side 1. The journos whining that a ‘baying mob’ has ‘endangered freedom of speech’ have a point only if freedom of speech is defined as something that only journalists have, or even that journalists particularly have, or have more than muggles do.

What happened was that Jan Moir exercised her freedom of speech, and thousands of members of the public exercised theirs in reply.

You have to accept that if you say something that makes someone angry, they may react angrily. If you are a journalist, your words may reach thousands of people, so you may very well make thousands of people angry.

Most people understand that saying certain things may result in a black eye. And you shouldn’t see this as a bad thing; we’re social animals. This is how we learn what is acceptable in our community.


Side 2. Anyone who thinks that the state should regulate what journalists (or anyone else) say is starting down a dangerous path. If you are appalled that in the early 20th century in the ‘land of the free’ that Emma Goldman had to handcuff herself to podiums in order to finish talks on birth control, before being carted off by the police, then you will have also to put up with the fact that in the early 21st century, Christian and Muslim clerics may well be telling halls up and down this country reactionary things about homosexuals.

Offending liberal sensibilities should not be a crime. I wrote to the PCC, not because I wanted the state to intervene, but because I knew that the PCC is not the state, but the press themselves. I merely thought it a fun way to make my point.


So where does this leave us? If Jan Moir and the Mail think that what they had to say was important and needed to be said, then they should carry on saying it. This doesn’t, however, mean they are special people, with a special license to offend, and that nobody can challenge or reply.

 

[gosub]

yes, i think it's very important that writers are free to publish stuff which causes offence

of course it's equally important that those offended should bite back.

far better people are offended and respond in kind than there are restrictions on the causing of offence- whether through the rich using libel to silence critics or the religious citing blasphemy or issuing a fatwah or some sort of censorship on the grounds of taste.

But there are limits, and rightly so, on face of it the Gately family should not have been expected to media firefight up to and beyond Stephen's funeral. If the paper had sufficient evidence of a cover up, then depending on the strength of that evidence their would be grounds to print and be dammed -that's journalism.

The trouble stems from the current fashion for comment piece where there is more emphasis on opinion, that titillates / offends whatever. This type of thing on the face of it should move closer to OFFCOM broadcast rules, but do that and there is case for extending it to ALL UK based web content, even urban. It is not hard to see that happening, internet libel laws are up for review, Tory candidates who look enviably at the Great Firewall of China are actually being selected...not good.

Like it not, the electronic ink is in this together with dead tree, and there should be a spirit of Voltaire, but that means defending a code that has organically grown through previous batterings, hard to do when the current Chair is the seemingly contemptuous party.

Fortunately, as the Press is at the moment self regulating, this is currently the dilemma of 11 more experienced minds than ourselves (i think Alan Rusbridger has done enough to exclude himself on conflict of interest)

The other problem is the petition time bomb -you have to ask yourself whats in state regulation for the likes of Mr Campbell? and whether a month can go by without the likes of Jonathan Ross tweeting about it


New Chair please!

 

[kyser_soze]

The trouble stems from the current fashion for comment piece where there is more emphasis on opinion, that titillates / offends whatever.

You really don't know anything about the history of newspapers, do you? There have always been commentators and op-ed and columnists, all of whom rely on their opinions for content rather than bothering with any actual 'facts'.

But there are limits, and rightly so, on face of it the Gately family should not have been expected to media firefight up to and beyond Stephen's funeral. If the paper had sufficient evidence of a cover up, then depending on the strength of that evidence their would be grounds to print and be dammed -that's journalism

See, here you're just making stuff up. Where was this media firefighting from Gately's family? Aside from a couple of quotes they'vre pretty much remained above the throng (which is obviously proving contentious and annoying re: the PCC complaints process). The rest of that sentence means nothing - they have published and been damned for it.

The rest of your post seems to be really confused - are you for greater regulation of the press or against it? Are you in approval of there being specific laws about content and meaning in journalism or against it?

 

[gosub]

I think that:
you can make a distinction between journalism and comment, and that there is a place for both.
that the internet largely squats on the space where scandal sheets grew into newspapers.
that the Gately family have handled themselves with some dignity.
that self regulation means doing something.

 

[newbie]

But there are limits, and rightly so, on face of it the Gately family should not have been expected to media firefight up to and beyond Stephen's funeral.

so writers should tiptoe around the death of a sleb? tbh I'm not sure I see why- if this young man was someone who had never previously been mentioned in a newspaper, never appeared on TV, had no public image at all, then to use his death to push some malign agenda should be off limits, imo, but that doesn't stop the press doing it.

But that's not the case here. He'd spent some years consciously developing a public profile, for his own benefit in pursuit of his career. Anyone who purposefully hires a publicist (or manager) and carefully builds an image has to anticipate the possibility that they might be torn to shreds by a fickle media, and that applies just as much in death as in life. I feel sorry for his family, as for the family of anyone who dies young, but neither they nor anyone else should expect that every single article about him will emphasis only the most glowing aspects of his celebrity. Icons get used as illustration.

 

[Badger Kitten]

A depressing yet sensible article about what is likely to happen once the PCC get going on it. By Matthew Cain.

Why Jan Moir and the Daily Mail will escape disciplinary action'
Posted: 21/10/09 By: Matthew Cain

The Press Complaints Commission has indicated that it is investigating Jan Moir’s article about the death of Stephen Gately, after receiving more complaints in three days than the previous five years combined. So what will happen next? My prediction is that Jan Moir and the Daily Mail will escape any disciplinary action.

The PCC always acts through the newspapers, rather than the individual journalists. Only once has a journalist been named by the PCC: Matthew Parris, for an article which attracted the previous record number of complaints. That article offended cyclists. He wrote: 'A festive custom we could do worse than foster would be stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists.'

The PCC will not necessarily act against the Daily Mail on the basis of the number of complaints that it received. Regulatory bodies and complaints ombudsmen do not work like that. The PCC did not uphold the complaint against The Times for Matthew Parris’ article.

Clause by clause

The complaints against Jan Moir were focussed around a possible breach of three clauses of the press code of practice: clause 1 (accuracy), clause 5 (intrusion into grief or shock) and clause 12 (discrimination).

The Daily Mail should not be able to justify the article as being in the public interest, despite the definition: 'There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.' The public interest defence is not available for breaches of clause 1 or clause 5.

The case against clause 1 is unlikely to stand up. Although some thought it cast doubt on the findings of the autopsy, it is not inaccurate to suggest that healthy people do not die in the night. And the article reported the findings of the autopsy correctly: 'A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.'

The newspaper clearly presented the article as a comment piece, distinguishing between comment, conjecture and fact - as required by clause 1. Finally, in the case of Anne Peck v Time Out the commission found that 'Although some might have judged them in dubious taste, they would be recognised by regular readers as Mr Mosby's own particular style.' Regular readers of Jan Moir know what to expect.

The case against clause 5 may also not stand up. In the case of Deidre Manchanda v The Independent the commission ruled: 'It did not consider that the information was gratuitously graphic or out of proportion to what was already in the public domain, or that the tone of the account was insensitive or unsympathetic.' Jan Moir’s article did not publish anything that was not already in the public domain. The tone was insensitive but possibly not sufficiently one-sided to be considered unsympathetic.


The commission has only upheld one complaint about clause 12 in the last nine years. In that case, A woman v News of the World (Scottish edition) the PCC set two tests for the complaint about a reference to a person’s sexuality: was it pejorative; and was it relevant? In Jan Moir’s article his sexuality is likely to be deemed relevant because of the visit to a gay club on the night of his death.

However, the article may be considered in breach of clause 12 for its references to Stephen Gately 'we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy' may be in breach.

It is not likely to be in breach for the wider implications it drew for civil partnerships: 'Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships' is probably not in breach because the code allows the press to be discriminatory against groups of people.

So what will happen next?

The case of Kelliher v British Medical Journal may be the most similar. The editors codebook (the committee which draws it up is chaired by the Daily Mail's editor, Paul Dacre) reports:

Although the Code does not cover the privacy of the dead, a critical obituary in the British Medical Journal, describing a doctor as 'the greatest snake-oil salesman of his age', brought a complaint from the man’s family. The PCC said it was not unacceptable to publish criticisms of the dead - but that the sensitivity of the family had to be taken into account. No adjudication was necessary as the editor offered to publish an apology for the distress caused.'

My best guess is that the Daily Mail will apologise for the offence caused, although not the article itself. The commission will not, then, be able to adjudicate so no offence will be recorded. The apology may even become a case study for effective self-regulation. This will all take several weeks in which time the heat will be taken out of the issue. And Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre appears not to accept that a resolved complaint can constitute a breach of the code - he only considers an adjudication against the paper a matter of embarrassment.

Few complaints ever make it to adjudication. Of the 222 Daily Mail articles which have attracted complaints since 1996, only three have made it to adjudication. That's a similar proportion to the rest of the industry. On average, about half of all cases that go to adjudication are found against the newspaper. But of the three cases against the Daily Mail two were not upheld and in the other, the PCC ruled that the paper had already offered sufficient remedy.

The PCC has not ruled against the Daily Mail for all the 13 years that it has put cases on its website.

This is a challenge for the PCC, which is constituted only to resolve complaints or adjudicate on them when they cannot be resolved. It is not able to perform the sort of independent self-regulation that some complainants, and the wider public, might expect. This critical issue must be at the heart of the PCC's forthcoming governance review or else public confidence in the industry will be weakened further.

Matthew Cain is researching press self-regulation for the Media Standards Trust. He blogs at http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk.

 

[john x]

A depressing yet sensible article about what is likely to happen once the PCC get going on it. By Matthew Cain.

Why is that depressing? It is not something that wasn't known before. It is only depressing if we truly believed that there would be some other outcome.

That was one of the points I was trying to make earlier. Whip everybody up into a frenzy that this is going to change the world then you are setting everyone up to come down with a bump.

The PCC was never going to take any meaningful action against the Mail. It can't. The point of making complaints was to log our feelings. And this has been done. The fact that they will probably reject pretty much all of them is neither here nor there. What is now on record is that Moir's article received more complaints than any other in the history of the PCC.

That is the good news.

john x

 

[berniedicters]

Ho ho! And who is going to get to decide what constitutes offensive? Would that be offensive by your subjective standard, or by someone elses, say a Christian, a red-red socialist or a conservative Muslim?

The 'free speech must have limits which are nice' argument is bollocks, quite frankly. Sorry.

In a way, this isn't a free speech argument.

Jan Moir exercised her right to free speech by writing a despicable and insensitive argument. 22,000+ people exercised their right to free speech by objecting - something that Moir and the Mail seem unwilling to confront, preferring instead to mutter about "orchestrated campaigns".

I think that there needs to be a limit to freedom of speech to prevent incitement of hatred, and excessively inflammatory comments being made, though I'll happily accept that finding where that line is to be drawn iw a fraught business, and one I'm glad I don't have to do.

 

[kyser_soze]

In a way, this isn't a free speech argument.

Jan Moir exercised her right to free speech by writing a despicable and insensitive argument. 22,000+ people exercised their right to free speech by objecting - something that Moir and the Mail seem unwilling to confront, preferring instead to mutter about "orchestrated campaigns".

I think that there needs to be a limit to freedom of speech to prevent incitement of hatred, and excessively inflammatory comments being made, though I'll happily accept that finding where that line is to be drawn iw a fraught business, and one I'm glad I don't have to do.

It becomes a free speech argument as soon as you, or anyone else, introduces comments like:

I think that there needs to be a limit to freedom of speech to prevent incitement of hatred, and excessively inflammatory comments being made

What can 'incite hatred'? Lets say we have a drama like Eastenders. One of the 'bad' characters happens to be gay. Does this mean EE would be inciting hatred against homosexuals by portraying a gay person in a bad light, even if their behaviour was clearly nothing to do with them being gay?

 

[Badger Kitten]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...e-right-between-free-speech-and-censorship.do

Roy Greenslade has a go in the Standard

Getting balance right between free speech and censorship
Roy Greenslade Roy Greenslade
21.10.09

I believe in free speech. Everyone believes in free speech. At least, everyone in advanced western societies is given to saying that they believe in free speech, almost as if it's an act of faith.

But it is also recognised, except by the most fundamentalist of libertarians, that the exercise of free speech carries with it certain responsibilities. That old maxim about not crying “fire!” in a crowded cinema, when there is no fire, is an obvious example of a responsible constraint.

That single example concedes the principle of unfettered freedom of speech and from it flows all sorts of supposedly reasonable restrictions.

In Britain, as distinct from the United States, we have always laboured under encroachments on our rights to free speech. The libel laws are a perfect example.

Our politicians also saw fit to pass laws to attempt to prevent racial and religious discrimination by prohibiting speech likely to incite violence and, in more recent times, the “glorification of terrorism”.

Many people don't like these laws, and it should be said that many people also do not obey them. In private, they say all sorts of things that — if said in public — might well lead to prosecution.

Indeed, many say them quite openly in pubs and clubs and at their workplaces. Some, disgracefully, scream them from the terraces of football grounds.

That “reality” is rarely reflected in the media because newspapers and broadcasters not only try to stay within the law but also work to editorial guidelines and codes that have been drawn up to comply with the law.

One clear example is the Editors' Code of Practice, the set of rules created in 1990 by a committee of newspaper and magazine editors (declaration of interest: I was one of the original drafting group) and administered by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The whole ethos of self-regulation is about constraint on freedom. It lays down rules about what journalists must NOT do in the pursuit of their work.

For example, in its original form, the code contained a clause stating that “the press should avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to a person's race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or to any physical or mental illness or handicap”.

There have been a couple of minor amendments since, but the key change — made more than 10 years ago in the wake of Princess Diana's death — was to alter the “should avoid” to the much stronger “must avoid”.

Doubtless, this particular injunction will be discussed in some depth by the PCC when it considers whether there are any grounds for censuring the Daily Mail and its columnist, Jan Moir, over her controversial column on the death of Irish singer Stephen Gately. As of yesterday, the PCC had registered more than 25,000 complaints from people who thought Moir's undoubtedly obnoxious article was guilty of breaking the code. Some thought it discriminatory, some considered it inaccurate, and others felt it intruded into grief.

It is going to test the commission, and its relatively new chairman, Baroness (Peta) Buscombe. But I have a feeling that the PCC will not find for the complainants.

Though Moir's allegations rest on supposition without a shred of provable evidence, and therefore meant that her reading of the situation was probably inaccurate, it was clearly speculation. Her piece was laced with innuendo that seemed to betray homophobia, but it is going to be tough to make the discrimination charge stick.

As for intrusion, unless Gately's family formally complain, it's hard to imagine the PCC agreeing with third-party complaints on that basis alone.

Even if the family do complain, the fact that the Daily Mail's Irish edition did not run the column may well be seen as a nod towards the paper being sensitive to offending his relatives in his home country.

My guess is that the PCC will see this as a free-speech issue, echoing the views of Matthew Parris, a gay man who disliked Moir's views intensely but who believes she has a right to express them — not least, interestingly, because “it's what people say in pubs”.

The same defence about pub talk can be mounted by those who advocate that Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, should appear in tomorrow evening's Question Time on BBC1. Leaving aside the argument, raised by the Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, about whether or not the BNP is a “lawfully constituted party”, it is still the case that he will merely be exercising his right to free speech in a democracy and, sadly, expounding the views held by at least its two million voters.

Yet his party is founded on the racist belief that people are not equal. Griffin avoids telling the truth about this in public, a point well made yesterday by the Daily Mail's resident libertarian columnist, Richard Littlejohn.

He said he had refused to take part in the programme because, having once had Griffin as a guest on one of his own TV shows in the past, he is aware that the BNP ideologue cleverly evades questions aimed at getting him to tell the truth.

Well, that's a challenge to the presenter, David Dimbleby, and the other guests, and I hope they rise to the occasion by persuading Griffin to be as candid as possible.

I am uneasy about his appearance, accepting Littlejohn's argument that he might well come over as just another politician rather than a fascist fanatic, but I think to deny him the right to speak on television would be infinitely worse in the long run.

However distasteful it is to put up with homophobic journalists and racist politicians, censorship does not remove prejudice. It drives it underground, a greater threat to democracy than reading and listening to offensive points of view.

 

[8ball]

I'm not sure what all the fuss re: retracting the article etc. is about.

The article is perfectly in keeping with the journalistic standards and values of the Daily Mail and its readership.

 

[berniedicters]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...e-right-between-free-speech-and-censorship.do

Roy Greenslade has a go in the Standard

And talks a lot of sense.

I think the important bit is the last bit - the idea that censorship actually leads to something worse, which is that the thoughts remain, but the words are driven underground.

It's the same thing with Griffin, whom Greenslade mentions - all the time the BNP are being marginalised, they can quite legitimately encourage the white, working class "man in the street" to identify with them in his own sense of marginalisation. Give them a platform, and you have at least denied them the soapbox of martyrdom.

We mustn't make martyrs out of people like Jan Moir and Nick Griffin - martyrdom offers these people a status of "victim", and it's a status they know only too well how to play to. Far worse for them is to be held in the public eye and forced to justify or account for each and every one of their strange views.

 

[gosub]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...e-right-between-free-speech-and-censorship.do

Roy Greenslade has a go in the Standard

Thats a good article, I do hope the press accepts as reliable as some bloke down the pub as a benchmark.

And he's also got BNP bit bang on but that is for another thread me thinks

 

[story]

Has this already been mentioned? Sorry if it has, but maybe worth mentioning again.

Radio Four's Feedback programme is discussing this issue today. Now-ish... or the next item....

Listen live here

 

[story]

Mini bump...

On right now

 

[boskysquelch]

now...on old fashion wavelengths.