8 Oct 2012 | News and features
Lancashire man Matthew Woods has been sentenced to 12 weeks in a young offender’s institute for making some very poor jokes.
It’s hard to know what to say after that.
Woods, 20, was arrested after posting jokes about missing Welsh schoolgirl April Jones on his Facebook page last Thursday. An angry mob reportedly later gathered at his house in Chorley, and he was taken by police at a separate address (quite possibly for his own protection).
According to reports, Woods was charged under sec 127 of the Communications Act — the same law, readers will recall, that Twitter Joke Trial defendant Paul Chambers found himself on the wrong side of.
It is worth noting that in his judgement on Paul Chambers appeal, the Lord Chief Justice made it quite clear that the Communications Act should not diminish
“Satirical, or iconoclastic, or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it”
But it has been used exactly to diminish Woods’s right to express unpopular, unfashionable and distasteful humour.
The “unfashionable” and “unpopular” elements of Woods’s comments and subsequent conviction bring to mind Liam Stacey’s conviction after he tweeted stupid comments about footballer Fabrice Muamba. Just as the nation then was apparently united in sympathy for the collapsed footballer, so now we are united in grief with the people of Machynlleth. Woods would appear to have been found “guilty” of crimes against taste and against sentiment.
We cannot allow this to continue. No one should be put in prison for making a joke that other people don’t like.
This week, the Crown Prosecution Service is consulting interested parties (including Index on Censorship) on whether new guidelines for prosecutions of social media cases are needed. This case goes to show how desperately urgent this reform is. In the past on this blog, we’ve bemoaned the something-must-be-done attitude that can lead to these cases coming to court. But now we have to say it ourselves: Something must be done about these absurd prosecutions. They are a danger to free speech, and a danger to the web.
ALSO READ: How do we legislate for social media?
5 Oct 2012 | News and features
Syrian writer Razan Zaitouneh won the Anna Politkovskaya Raw in War Award in 2011. She addresses the Russian journalist, who’s assassination remains unsolved, about Marie Colvin, 2012 recipient, who was killed in Syria earlier this year
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5 Oct 2012 | Uncategorized
Banned Books Week, the annual American event documenting literary censorship is now in its 30th year. This year the American Library Association (ALA) is highlighting just how many books in the classic canon have been championed and challenged simultaneously. It is an astounding read, revealing the often ludicrious reasons why classic books were banned, and how some are still being challenged.
Many of the complaints teeter on the edge of absurdity. Brave New World was removed from Missouri classrooms in 1980 for making promiscuous sex “look like fun”; The Diary of Anne Frank was challenged for being “a real downer” in 1983, and The Lord of the Flies was contested in 1981 for being “demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal.”
Attempts to censor books continue, The Lord of the Rings was ceremoniously burned in 2001 for being ‘satanic’; One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest challenged in 2000 for simply being “garbage”, and To Kill a Mockingbird in 2006 for “promoting white supremacy”. This is an entirely inaccurate representation of the novel, of course, but the racist language used was an accurate representation of the time, and to censor history is akin to denying it altogether.
The ten most challenged titles of 2011 included The Hunger Games trilogy and My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy. And the most frequently challenged literature of the 21st century? And Tango Makes Three, a picture book based on a true story of two male penguins who adopted an egg in a New York Zoo, topping the most challenged list in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010.
Daisy Williams is an Editorial Intern at Index on Censorship
5 Oct 2012 | Uncategorized
Allegations about the late Jimmy Savile’s abuse of young girls have led to a curious binary set of reactions. On the one hand, we are shocked and appalled. On the other hand, we knew all along.
There were always rumours, of course. Journalist Lynn Barber, in a 1990 interview, put the allegation to Savile: “What people say is that you like little girls.”
But a mixture of fear of privacy and libel laws, and the censorious pressure that prominent, well-connected figures can impose not just on weak and insecure young girls and their families, meant the rumours were never properly confronted. Even the BBC’s Newsnight would not broadcast the allegations .
Former tabloid editor Brian Hitchen wrote yesterday that England’s libel laws “too often help make those like Savile untouchable.”
Even now, the threat of libel suits could hang over newspapers seeking to further investigate allegations made by women who testified in ITV’s documentary about Savile.
The law should not be a tool for the powerful to silence the weak. And this is all about power: men over women, celebrity over the unknown, rich over poor.
As more stories emerge about the likes of Savile and Gary Glitter, I cannot help but compare it with the widespread clerical abuse that gripped the state of Ireland for many years. The enormity of this child Gulag has been revealed in a series of official reports in the past few years, with grim testimony given as victims finally found a space where they could speak of their experiences.
The reaction to those reports was revulsion. But it came from that same place of knowing and not knowing as the reaction to the Savile story. There cannot have been a person in Ireland who did not know that the church covered up child abuse. But we were reassured that they were bad apples, and it felt wrong to complain when there were so many good priests who did so much for our spiritual and physical wellbeing.
Savile pulled the same trick. How could you attack a man who did so much for the community?
In even the worst totalitarian regime, rumours about the rulers can circulate below the censor’s radar. But it’s only when we can proclaim, on the record and with confidence, our doubts about the rich, famous and powerful, that we can actually bring about change.
Padraig Reidy is News Editor of Index on Censorship
More on libel:
Why it’s vital that the government act to protect free speech
Five ludicrous libel cases
Last chance to sign our petition to reform libel laws that stifle debate, curtail criticism and even endanger lives
