Read on Twitter
I trained as a journalist in the early 1990s at City University and did a bit of media law as part of that, taught by the late great Marcel Berlins. It was mostly about libel law, and how stacked it was against journalists and in favour of the rich and powerful.
Of course things have changed somewhat since then, but the basic contours and dynamics remain intact and unchanged. Libel law is a rich man's game and its primary purpose is repressive, ie to discourage people from writing things that might harm the reputations of the powerful.
Back then journalism was still a profession of sorts, with a certain code (and a certain pomposity). Viewing libel law as the *enemy*, as something that suppressed free speech in the interests of the rich, was part of the professional "line" one would imbibe as a cub hack.
In particular, the notion that a journalist might use libel law sue those who criticised their work was unheard of. It would have been seen as a grotesque violation of the code that bound journalists together against an establishment they were entangled with but set apart from.
I say this because I am puzzled by the lack of condemnation or even criticism of John Ware's legal threats against those who disputed his Panorama documentary. That a journalist of all people would set lawyers on their critics – that would have been anathema not so very long ago.
We live today in a journalistic climate that is wound up into a near permanent hysteria over "cancel culture" and its supposed threat to free speech. But here is a very tangible, in fact indisputable example of a threat to free speech – and it goes unremarked upon.
More than that – it isn't even *seen* as a free speech issue. The very idea that there might be another narrative at play here, and that suppression of that narrative might be problematic in some way, is written out a priori.
Our latter-day wannabe Voltaires lie silent. For them, only certain points of view count as free speech. And anything even tangentially related to acknowledging the Palestinian cause is absolutely not part of that gilded circle.
I won't pretend to know what we can do about this situation. But at the very least we should speak out against it and make clear our contempt for those servile hypoocrites who bleat about their liberty while using the force of the law to shut their critics down.
