"It took endless humiliation before parliament got the message and decided to reform the law of libel: the UN Human Rights Council said our libel law chilled free speech across the entire globe, American academics faced our courts for writing about the funding of Al Qaeda, Barack Obama signed into law an act to protect Americans from our libel law and decent scientists such as Simon Singh Ben Goldacre and NHS cardiologist Pete Wilsmhurst faced ruin thanks to the law.
"If Prince Charles is not neutral then the public have a right to know."
Refusal to release Charles' black spiders is not about privacy - it's about secrecy. Which is outrageous. Wrote this: http://t.co/D03lIA5JwU
— Archie Bland (@archiebland) March 17, 2014
"We are very disappointed by the decision of the court. We will be pursuing an appeal to the Supreme Court in order to protect the important principles which are at stake in this case."
“Rocking the boat”, I suspect, was never that big on the journalist’s agenda, particularly if not exactly to the proprietor’s taste. In any case, rocking it has more often been a case of cumulative work rather than going for it in one steady hit.
"Too many journalists still hunt in packs and so end up producing what Hugo Dixon calls ‘Me Too’ journalism. In the close confines of Northern Ireland this can lead to political pressures to conform (by not asking stupid questions) for the sake of our increasingly geriatric Peace Process™."Mick Fealty had previously looked at the concentrated pressure for journalists to conform. He quoted an Irish Times report:
"In [Northern Ireland] journalists were sometimes told to hold back on a story in case they might do damage to the delicate administration. While this was not a point to ignore, you couldn’t make exceptions."But Mick Fealty has said how Northern Ireland journalists should operate:
"I’ve no doubt of the contribution, but the “well-behaved witness” now needs to start asking “stupid” questions. Otherwise false, or partial, narratives will go unchallenged as those witnesses continue to ignore “the bits that do not suit particular prejudices”. And when “agreed truth becomes accepted, the real truth becomes a lie”."
"Our rights are being infringed more and more on every side, and the danger is that we get used to it. So I want to use the 25th anniversary for us all to do that, to take the web back into our own hands and define the web we want for the next 25 years."This call comes as part of the initiative 'the web we want.' This initiative calls on people to create a digital bill of rights in each country which should be supported by public institutions, government officials and corporations. Berners-Lee said:
"Unless we have an open, neutral internet we can rely on without worrying about what's happening at the back door, we can't have open government, good democracy, good healthcare, connected communities and diversity of culture. It's not naive to think we can have that, but it is naive to think we can just sit back and get it."Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat presiden, has called for a digital bill of rights in response to 'overreach by the state' after its imposition of 'blanket surveillance' of citizens. It would be a move for the people against the work of GCHQ by blocking the "bulk collection of data". A digital bill of rights would protect the public by guarding basic online freedoms from the "untrammelled power of the state". He said:
"The 1689 bill of rights codified the basic freedoms which we still enjoy today. As we live more of our lives online, we deserve to know that we also enjoy a similar level of freedom in what we do in cyberspace."The site for 'the web we want' can be accessed here.
"The refusal of the Northern Ireland executive to extend to Northern Ireland the remit of the Defamation Act and the legal clarity and free speech protection it brings, is quite simply unjustifiable. Why should the citizens and journalists of Northern Ireland not be afforded the same protection of those in the rest of the United Kingdom, whether they are expressing opinions online or holding government to account. Why as the rest of the United Kingdom embraces the digital revolution, should Northern Ireland be confined by our archaic and unfocused freedom of expression laws?
"The “profile” was, in other words, a gold mine. I had hit the libel jackpot. The Sunday Times couldn’t possibly go into court to defend an article that was so sloppily written and badly researched. Even the most aggressive lawyer would tell them to stuff my mouth with gold and make the whole thing go away fast."
"In the real world, that was the end of the "debate". Those who took offence at being called homophobic were able to continue to express their opinions – Breda O'Brien of the Irish Times and David Quinn of the Iona Institute were able to talk or write about it without fear of legal sanction. But otherwise there was nothing. This is because our libel laws are very conducive to closing down any debate that might tend towards the contentious.
"There is something truly bizarre (and yet in keeping with the zeitgeist of our age) that someone should become the focus of death threats and an international campaign of vilification for suggesting that an inoffensive cartoon was, well, inoffensive.
From the Rushdie affair to the controversy over the Danish cartoons, from the forcing offstage of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti to the attempt this week by members of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to shut down the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Bible: The Complete Word Of God (a decision thankfully later reversed), reactionaries have often used campaigns against ‘offence’ as a political weapon with which to harass opponents and as a means of bolstering their community support. The anti-Nawaz campaign is no different. Muhammad Shafiq and Muhammad Ansar both have had public spats with Nawaz, and both are cynically exploiting the claim of ‘offensiveness’ to reclaim political kudos."
"This is about protecting freedom of speech in Northern Ireland. This is particularly important to us, because our current system of government means we do not have a second chamber, like the Lords in London, who scrutinise and revise legislation coming out of the Commons. Nor do we have an official opposition, a role performed to a large extent by the media.
"It should not have been a flat refusal. The NI assembly should at the very least reconsider halting the extension of libel reform to NI without having a proper, open and public consultation on the issue. There must be an open debate ominous NI about brining it back into line with the rest of the UK.
The press are the eyes and the ears of society and watch as a public watchdog. Chilling press freedom of speech damages the public community at large.