Gagging orders – a thing of the past? October 13, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , trackbackUpdate at 2106 -The injunction was withdrawn at about one this afternoon, and the Guardian have now published in full. A bit of a total PR CarterRuckup, you might say…
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I’m having great fun this morning, being distracted from my essay by the growing Guardian Gagging Order Scandal. In a beautifully nuanced piece on the front page, the Guardian explained that it had been served an injunction preventing it from reporting anything about a question due to be asked in Parliament this week. It didn’t actually say ‘Bloggers – to your marks!’ but it may as well have.
I read the paper in a cafe at about 9.30am. By the time I got on the computer at 10.15, three facebook friends had already posted the article along with another article in the Spectator explaining what the fuss was all about and giving the question, and a quick check on a couple of blogs revealed a link to the offending report, which seems likely to be the subject of the question.
This appears to be a sad story of an international corporation dumping, quite literally, on the very poor of a developing nation in pursuit of profit. They’ve offered to pay compensation, but the whole thing is likely to become a criminal matter, and clearly the company don’t want the evidence of their wrong-doing to get out into the public sphere. This scandal has been brewing for some months and the Guardian has done sterling work in shining a light in some very dark places.
The new scandal is that a respected newspaper could be prevented from publishing a question to go before parliament. Parliament, for all it’s faults, is public, and citizens have the right to know what goes on there. This horrendous injunction is yet another nail in the coffin of our moribund parliamentary democracy, and the reform of British libel laws must be a top priority for any parliament with self-respect.
This time, the injunction clearly hasn’t worked. As I write, #trafigura is one of the most popular tags on twitter, and three of the top four tags relate to this scandal. Thousands of people, many of whom will never have heard of Trafigura or its unpleasant ways now know about it.
I’d guess that, next time, the injunction will be stronger, and articles like the one this morning will become more difficult to write. Our media laws need a rapid (though well thought out) rewrite to strengthen consideration of the public interest, and, while we’re on the subject, the fair comment defense against libel.
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