PAST EVENT: Copenhagen: “Saying the unsayable: is climate scepticism the new Holocaust denial?”
The Copenhagen Summit will debate one of the most important public issues of the past thirty years. Many scientists and advocates predict climate change will kill potentially hundreds of millions of people worldwide over the coming decades. This begs the question: is there a special responsibility for the media to exercise restraint in reporting climate change? Or are we witnessing the rise of an unchallengeable orthodoxy?
3 Dec, 6.30 – 8pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
RSVP to: [email protected]
or call Free Word on +44 (0) 20 7324 2570
On our panel debating “Saying the unsayable: is climate scepticism the new Holocaust denial?”:
George Monbiot
George Monbiot is one of the UK’s leading environmental campaigners and the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent, A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian. His website is: www.monbiot.com
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is a libertarian conservative journalist, broadcaster and author of Welcome To Obamaland, I’ve Seen Your Future And It Doesn’t Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His website is: www.jamesdelingpole.com/
Further reading
James Delingpole, “Climategate reminds us of the liberal-left’s visceral loathing of open debate”, Daily Telegraph, 24 Nov 2009
Read here
George Monbiot, “The threat is from those who accept climate change, not those who deny it”, The Guardian, 21 Sep 2006.
Read here
Dominic Grieve: "I'm sure there is a problem"
This morning’s Today programme featured Tracey Brown of Sense About Science (a valued partner organisation in the Libel Reform Campaign), cardiologist and libel tourism victim Peter Wilmshurst, and Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve.
You can listen to it all here (07.37 for Tracey, 08.48 for Wilmshurst and Grieve).
Worryingly, Dominic Grieve doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with English libel laws, besides the expense. While expense is a serious concern, it is by no means the main one, as Grieve claims. He posits that people sue in London because of the potential earnings. But this would seem to miss the point: the earnings are attractive, but it is the favourable prospect of winning that makes it worth bringing a case: it is, currently, not a huge gamble to bring a defamation case.
Addressing the specific case of Peter Wilmshurst, Grieve said it was “remarkable” that someone had “chosen” to sue the cardiologist in England. Sadly, it is not remarkable that NMT has “chosen” to bring a suit against Wilmshurst in London. What is remarkable that NMT can bring the suit here.
On libel tourism, Grieve went on to say that if a foreign-published libel is “widely reproduced” in the UK, then a person should have a right to sue: well, quite. But no one, at least not Index on Censorship, English Pen or Sense About Science, has suggested otherwise. The key word is “widely”, a question addressed in Index and PEN’s report.
With the Lib Dems committed to reform, and Labour’s Jack Straw at least making positive noises, isn’t it time the Conservatives started taking libel seriously?
Africa's puppet governments
This is a guest post by Jenni Hulse
In Africa, where media repression is widespread and state-controlled broadcasters the norm, the success of a familiar form of televised political satire offers new hope for freedom of speech. South Africa’s ZA News and Kenya’s The XYZ Show are recognisable descendents of the UK’s Spitting Image and France’s Les Guignols, using latex puppets to ridicule major politicians and celebrities. Like their European predecessors, both shows are huge hits in their native countries, controversial in their content and provoke mixed reactions from the politicians they lampoon.
It is no coincidence that The XYZ Show and ZA News were both masterminded by political cartoonists. Print media in Kenya and South Africa enjoy relatively high levels of freedom and satirical cartoons, published in major dailies, are an important and popular form of political criticism.
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