Two statistics and the right-thinking person

November 20, 2008

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What is a ‘right-thinking person’? For defamation lawyers, a right-thinking person is an abstract entity whose task it is to determine the natural and ordinary meaning of words.

British National Party members might prefer another definition, but they bring us to our first statistic. The names and addresses of 10,635 BNP members are in the public domain after a former member supposedly leaked the list online. The Guardian carries a piece about the inevitable Google Maps Mashup here, while we find our second statistic over at the Independent in this story. It outlines new Government proposals to make it illegal to use prostitutes who have been trafficked into the country or who work for pimps or drug traffickers. Ignorance of the new law, or of a woman’s circumstances, will be no defence for the estimated 100,000 men who pay prostitutes for sex every year.

If there are some 10,000 BNP members, in contrast to 100,000 men who visit prostitutes, is the right-thinking person less inclined to view prostitution as an evil than xenophobia and racism? We doubt it, but one thing’s for sure: the clash of freedom of expression – whether of ideas or sexuality – with morality is sounding louder and louder.

The image of BNP leader Nick Griffin, a man who would undoubtedly describe himself as ‘right-thinking’, is courtesy of PA. 

 

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
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The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.