What the matters discussed in Part One of this post demonstrate above all is the complexity and difficulty of critiquing the OSA as a threat to perfectly legitimate forms of expression when such significant parts of the mainstream media, namely the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Express, Mail and GB News, along with pressure groups such as the Free Speech Union and powerful right-wing ‘think tanks’ (in actual fact, ‘free market’ lobbyists) such as the Adam Smith Institute and Policy Exchange have, in pursuit of their own political and ideological ends, repeatedly set it up as a straw man and attacked it from the perspective of what has come to be known as free speech fundamentalism.
In such a situation, it is crucial to point out that the fundamentalists’ conception of freedom of expression has precious little to do with the Enlightenment values which gave rise to the notion in the first place, or with the commitment to human rights which is firmly based in those values. Rather, it is an anglicised form of the First Amendment fundamentalism promoted by Elon Musk, recently given a considerable amount of uncontested space in the Telegraph to denounce the OSA as ‘suppression of the people’.
In short, such fundamentalism boils down to a demand for consequence-free speech and the promotion of ideas with which the fundamentalists and libertarians agree and the marginalising, if not indeed the suppression, of those of which they disapprove. No wonder, then, that the fundamentalists’ champions on the political front, namely Reform and the Tory far right, want to tear up the Human Rights Act and drag the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Many of those concerned with the OSA from a human rights perspective regard the online material that has caused such concern as being the inevitable product of the structures that produces it – namely the US-based tech titans with their relentless, algorithm-driven business model that actively prioritises user engagement and promotes an all-out race for market share. Until the problems inherent in this model are acknowledged and addressed directly, they argue, and until the tech industry is required by statute to prioritise children’s safety in product design and development, it’s extremely difficult to see how effective online regulation which is genuinely in the public interest can be made to work in the UK. And this, again, is a position diametrically opposed to that of the fundamentalists and libertarians, who, as ardent ‘free marketeers’, are bitterly hostile to any form of structural regulation, which they regard not only as oppressing the tech sector but as an illegitimate interference with market forces more generally.
Vassalage and fealty
Such considerations go a long way to explaining the remarkable spectacle of politicians and papers which, prior to Brexit, constantly complained about the UK being in ‘vassalage’ to the EU loudly warning the British government and Ofcom against doing anything by way of regulation which would alienate the oligarchs, tech bros and president and vice-president of a foreign country (albeit one with which we enjoy a so-called ‘special relationship’).
Here the Telegraph has really outdone itself in fealty to the US, and has established something of a symbiotic relationship with Republican congressman Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Apart from repeatedly quoting, unchallenged, his ill-informed remarks about British and EU online regulation, it has also published emails recovered by his committee as a result of a subpoena to TikTok ‘regarding the company’s compliance with foreign censorship laws’. These were sent to TikTok by members of the National Security and Online Information Team (characteristically described by the paper as a ‘secretive Whitehall “spy” unit’) based in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and concerned posts that were put up during the disturbances following the Southport murders in July 2024. The Telegraph quotes Jordan as claiming that ‘Labour ministers had censored posts that were critical of the Government’s policy on asylum’, but it also cannot resist reprinting its ‘scooped’ trophy emails in full – which show that Jordan is talking nonsense. In the emails, the unit pointed out to TikTok that there was a ‘serious risk of misleading and false claims in relation to this incident fuelling community tensions on a local level and the potential for further physical harm’, and simply reminded the platform of its terms of service and acknowledged its ‘proactive efforts to support local law enforcement’ at a time of increasingly violent protests.
More was to come, however, on 18 August when the paper ran a whole article by Jordan and two other Republican members of his committee. This was headlined ‘We led a delegation to investigate Europe’s targeting of free speech. What we saw shocked us’, with the strap: ‘Instead of fixing a surging migrant crisis and stagnant economy, the UK and EU are even trying to censor American critics of their policies’. The gist of the piece is that ‘American free speech’ is ‘at risk from foreign censorship laws that seek to have global effects, including here in the United States’. More specifically, and entirely wrong-headedly, it also claims that the OSA ‘requires large social media platforms to assess and “mitigat[e]” – that is, censor – content that includes undefined categories of so-called disinformation and hate speech’. In point of fact, ‘hate speech’ is not mentioned once in the Act, and, as noted earlier, papers such as the Telegraph, via lobbying by the News Media Association, ensured that it contains virtually nothing outlawing dis- or misinformation.
Also worth mentioning in this context of fealty to the US is a Telegraph article on 13 August, headed ‘US warns of “serious restrictions” on free speech in Britain, with the strap ‘State department report reveals concerns over free speech and says UK’s “human rights situation worsened” year that Labour came to power’. This lavished entirely uncritical coverage on the US state department’s annual Human Rights Report, which claimed that, following the Southport murders last year, the UK Government ‘repeatedly intervened to chill speech’ and that ‘censorship of ordinary Britons was increasingly routine, often targeted at political speech’. This, again is entirely misinformed, but the report’s mention of Southport provides the paper with yet another opportunity to propagandise on behalf of its secular saint and martyr Lucy Connolly (gaoled for 31 months for inciting racial hatred in the wake of the Southport killings) and Adam Smith-Connor (convicted of breaching buffer zones outside UK abortion clinics, another issue that obsesses Americans of a certain stripe), although neither of these was convicted under the OSA, which anyway had not come fully into force at the time these crimes were committed.
So now it’s not only the Telegraph’s devotion to the sovereignty of the UK parliament that has been jettisoned but also its erstwhile hard line on law and order. It is not alone among right-wing national titles in turning such somersaults but it is certainly leading the acrobatic troupe.
Julian Petley is honorary and emeritus professor of journalism at Brunel University London, and the co-editor, with John Steel, of the Routledge Companion to Freedom of Expression and Censorship (2023). A regular contributor to Byline Times and the British Journalism Review, he is also a member of the editorial board of the latter.
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