Readers of Byline Times are likely to have been among the many who have complained to Ofcom about GB News and its partisan political stance. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Julian Petley (Page 1 of 5)
Press freedom is once again in peril, according to right-wing newspapers. As part of a mass offensive recalling the heady days of reaction to the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices, and ethics of the British press following the phone-hacking scandal, an editorial in the Mail on 28 November boomed that freedom of the press is a “democratic necessity” and among the “precious institutions and freedom which must not be compromised at any price” – while Charles Moore warned in the Telegraph on 24 November that “the nationalisation of a British national newspaper seems possible”. Continue reading
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Salman Rushdie on 12 August, politicians and newspapers fell over themselves to praise the author for risking his own life in the cause of freedom of expression.
How different from February 1989, when the fatwa was announced on account of The Satanic Verses. Continue reading
As we have seen, Raab claims that the Bill of Rights “helped mould a separation of powers between government, Parliament and the courts – a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of the state from dominating the others or abusing its power”. But as far back as 1976 the Conservative sometime Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, was warning that the parliamentary system could be exploited in such a manner that it could act as an ‘elective dictatorship’. Continue reading
Raab’s view of the Bill of Rights 1689 is, if anything, even more rose-tinted than his misty-eyed evocation of Magna Carta. According to him, the Bill “built on earlier rights. Fair trial safeguards were added, strengthening the independence of the jury selection from bias, and requiring the prior conviction of a criminal offence before the imposition of fines or the forfeiture of property”. He also points out that it added to Article 20 of Magna Carta “a ban on the infliction of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’”, which he sees as “an early precursor to the modern ban on torture”. Continue reading
Raab expanded considerably on the sentiments expressed above in the first chapter of his book The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights (2009). When this was published, Raab took the opportunity openly to state that “I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights”, and many of the Act’s defenders regard the Bill of Rights Bill that he has recently introduced as the culmination of a twelve-year campaign to rip up our current human rights protections. Continue reading
According to Peter Hitchens in the Mail, 22 June 2022: “There’s no such thing as human rights … They are an invention, made out of pure wind. If you are seriously interested in staying free, you should not rely on these flatulent, vague phrases to help you. They are in fact a weapon in the hands of those who wish to remove your liberty and transform society”. Continue reading
Every time that Britain’s national newspapers are threatened with a more effective form of regulation than that allegedly provided by IPSO, they are wont to scream blue murder that what is being proposed is nothing less than “state licensing” of the press. Continue reading
The BBC has developed a reputation for arrogantly brushing off criticism and failing to acknowledge and rectify mistakes before the consequent damage to its reputation has been done. This post suggests some possible reasons for this attitude, and also ways in which the BBC might behave in a less self-destructive manner in future. Continue reading
The press lobbying described in Part 2 continued . Dire warnings about the effects of the measures proposed in the White Paper have continued to appear in papers such as the Mail. Continue reading
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