Wednesday 15 February 2012

A Free Country

Spluttering today that Caroline Spelman and her husband have won an injunction against the Daily Star Sunday on behalf of their 17-year-old son, Jonathan. If you are looking for a press freedom story, then the supposed right to publish details of some Sixth Former's having got himself into a spot of bother is not it. On the contrary, such a thing ought to be illegal. Clearly, it is.

Certain grandly-named bodies maintained by the corporate media compile essentially bogus league tables in order to snare the unwary into believing that such protections place this country in an invidious position compared with other, supposedly freer places. But what made their, entirely commercial and amoral, definition normative?

Based on the freedom of a youth to be protected from the money-grubbing public proclamation of his indiscretions, these days to be preserved forever thereafter on the Internet, merely because of who is mother is, we live in one of the freest countries on earth. Long may that remain the case.

No comments:

Post a Comment