The Daily Mail is angry because Virgin Trains has decided not to stock the paper on its trains any more. The paper has accused the train company of ‘censorship’.
Hmm.
First of all, Virgin is a private company. Ultimately, it has a right to stock whatever it wants in the shops on its trains, and enter into the deals it wants to regarding distribution of free copies to its first class passengers. As Jane Fae says in a column for the Guardian, clearly the company has decided that the Daily Mail is not ‘on brand’.
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Tag: freedom of expression (Page 12 of 31)
The Intercept journalist James Risen has published a fascinating retrospective on his time covering intelligence and security for the New York Times. He discusses how many of his stories exposing CIA wrong-doing during the Bush Administration were spiked by editors who nevertheless gave front-page coverage to stories that appeared to confirm the existence of the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction that were the pretext for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He also writes about his court appearances in 2014 and 2015 when the Obama Administration threatened him with imprisonment for not revealing confidential sources in stories about the CIA’s activities in Iran.
NYU Professor of Journalism Jay Rosen says this was “the most important thing published about journalism today.” Risen’s piece made me think of this tweet from the last days of 2017:
They say “a free press is the single greatest defense against tyrrany.”
It’s not. The single greatest defense is an EFFECTIVE press.
12/
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) December 30, 2017
Risen’s account of when and why some of his stories were spiked reminded me of the wonderful ‘Road To Damascus‘ episode from Season 2 of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. It deals with the story of how the CIA recruited a double-agent, how that fact was leaked to journalist Tim Weiner, and how the reporting of that story in the New York Times probably caused the death of that double-agent. It was one of the most compelling things I listened to in 2017.
I was on BBC Radio London this morning, talking to presenter Nikki Bedi about free speech. It’s a topic of conversation today because Universities Minister Jo Johnson is about to make a speech in which (apparently) he will suggest that higher education institutions should be fined if they fail to protect freedom of expression. He has taken aim at the practice of no-platform policies before.
You can listen to the discussion on the BBC London website. My contribution is 1 hour and 17 minutes into the show, at about 8:20AM. Continue reading
The Royal Court Theatre has cancelled a revival of Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Andrea Dunbar’s 1982 play about grooming and sexual exploitation. The cancellation came after it was revealed in October that Max Stafford-Clark, who directed the original production and co-directed the revival, had been forced to resign as creative director of Out of Joint due to multiple allegations of ‘inappropriate behaviour.’
The venue had recently staged No Grey Area, an event in which 150 stories of sexual abuse and exploitation were shared over the course of an afternoon. The Royal Court’s artistic director Vicky Featherstone has called for the British theatre community to reckon with the abuses of power, just as Hollywood is doing now that the extent of Harvey Weinstein’s monstrous behaviour has been revealed. In this context, says the theatre, staging Rita, Sue and Bob Too is “highly conflictual.”
I spoke to New York Times correspondent Anna Codrea-Rado about the cancellation and am quoted in her report: Continue reading
I have finally started reading The Great Dissent by Thomas Healy. It’s history of how United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes came to write a famous defence (or should I write defense?) of free speech in the case Abrams v. United States. It’s a fascinating account of how someone with entrenched conservative views changed his mind, and also a useful potted history of the concept of free speech. I’m making plenty of notes and bookmarking several passages. Continue reading