++ Exclusive ++ Matthew Parris on ‘Thinking before Bedding’.
‘Journalists think before they write – bloggers write before they think’, runs the popular mantra of those who extol the virtues of professional journalists over bloggers.
The uproar over Jan Moir’s article in the Daily Mail last week prompted my own article on the hypocrisy of the Twittter crowd who had jubilantly hailed their own success at ensuring ‘free speech’ in rendering Carter-Ruck’s injunction against the Guardian newspaper meaningless, and were now being employed in a campaign to condemn and ‘punish’ a similar example of ‘free speech’ – this time one that they didn’t approve of.
Across the blogosphere, acres of bandwidth were employed to debate the issues. Global warming took another step forward to provide the newsprint to defend (rarely) or condemn Jan Moir for her temerity in speaking her mind in print.
So many voices, so many uninformed. The few who were columnists – Roy Greenslade amongst them, were not Gay. The few who were Gay were not newspaper columnists – notably Iain Dale. I wanted to hear from someone who was truly an informed commentator, someone who understood the Gay issues involved, and also understood the parameters within which a newspaper columnist should operate.
I decided to ask Matthew Parris. He was kind enough to tell me. I didn’t ask for his opinion on the Jan Moir article, I was more interested in how much thought columnists should give to the possible repercussions of their writing before ‘putting the paper to bed’.
“How much of a mental tightrope do you, as a professional columnist, walk before committing yourself to print – do you write from the heart, or from the head, mindful of your advertisers”, I asked?
Matthew says he tries not “to agonise too much. Obviously one must take care not to risk being sued or prosecuted, but if you think too hard about how to avoid offending individuals or groups, it has a chilling effect on the vigorous expression of opinion or comment. The one thing I do think really hard about” he continued “is whether I really believe what I’m writing. To be true to yourself (if you trust yourself, and I do) is what matters most.”
Even Bloggers have to think about the risk of being sued or prosecuted before committing to ‘publish’, but Bloggers appeal to their own niche market, newspapers, theoretically have a wider remit; but mindful of Iain Dale’s comment “What is it with the Mail that it wants to alienate 10% of the population?” – “should any ’single interest’ group be able to dictate by coercion or any other means, what the majority of the population reads?” I asked.
“We Gays” said Matthew, “and others whose belief is in individual freedom, need to be very, very, careful before we start using statistics about the number of people offended, as arguments for what is effectively a kind of censorship. All sides can play this game. A substantial proportion of Daily Mail readers are probably offended by Gay-sympathetic coverage. The Christian Evangelicals are just as capable as are Gay campaigning groups, of getting a mass-bandwagon going in Social Networking terms”
Here in France, discrimination of any sort is officially frowned upon, in response, many feel, discrimination has been driven underground, forced to become more subtle, I wondered whether these sort of campaigns to ‘dictate’ the written agenda might not have the same effect.
“Gays need to learn to have broader shoulders” thinks Matthew, “like, for example, the Irish, who almost never complain. When criticism is forbidden it goes underground. Groups who might regard themselves as very successful in deterring public criticism – Pro-Israeli or Pro-Palestinian Lobbies, for instance, or disabled lobbies, actually build up unexpressed resentment.”
One feature of the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck affair was the litigant’s complaint that the Minton report was premature and didn’t contain all the information. A frequent criticism of the Jan Moir article was that it was premature in the sense of intruding on the family’s grief. I wondered whether Twitter itself is in danger of being a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction before all the facts are known, and whether ‘timing’ affected the validity of speaking out?
“Complainants sometimes sound as though they are asking journalists to wait until public interest in a story has faded, before we write about it”
“Good journalism has always waded in, fists flying, before final judgments have been reached”
Last word to Matthew…
“So it should”
Edited to add: Apologies to Matthew – I inadvertently referred to him as a ‘professional communist’ in the original draft – he is no such thing of course, he is an ex-Tory MP and Columnist of the Year several times over – how could I? Argggggh!!!!!
- First Class posts on Monday Letters From A Tory
- October 20, 2009 at 12:45 am
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
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1
October 19, 2009 at 2:46 pm -
Excellent post
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2
October 19, 2009 at 3:35 pm -
I can but echo OH, but then your posts usually are, which is why I read you.
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October 19, 2009 at 3:49 pm -
Absolutely agree with both comments above. Great piece of blogging worthy of publication as a column in any newspaper – any takers Anna?
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October 19, 2009 at 3:52 pm -
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October 19, 2009 at 4:30 pm -
Have to agree on the quality of the post.
BTW, watch out for me on tomorrow’s 6.30 and 10pm ITN News in relation to the story about prisons transferring prisoners to deny the prisons inspector to get access to them.
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6
October 19, 2009 at 4:43 pm -
Coo! A bit of a coup!
Nice one Anna, getting Mr Parris’s cool, calm and collected comments amid the blog-bluster.
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7
October 19, 2009 at 4:45 pm -
Excellent post, Mrs Raccoon. It’s good to read Matthew Parris’s views on these matters. Since leaving Westminster he seems to have totally rebuilt his brain from the neck up and is now a very honest and perspicacious commentator and professional communist.
The Carter Ruck thing was a classic anti-authoritarian backlash – how dare a bunch of rich lawyers decide what we should and should not be told – but I think the Twitter versus Moir thing is an entirely different phenomenon. Every time the Labour Party are defeated in an election (or in this case are certain soon to be so) the wider labour movement splits into its component subgroups who then revert to direct action and exclusive pursuit of their own self-interest. Thus we have the unions returning to strike action, militant Islamists taking to the streets along with the UAF, the gay movement using direct action to solidify the gains made under a Labour government. During the summer Harriet Harman used her last big moment in the limelight as acting PM not to talk about any of the big issues of the day but to promote the “equalities” agenda. I think that the attempt earlier this year to unseat Trevor Phillips at the Equalities Commission was an attempt to get a more militant leader in place in time for the new and more hostile climate that may follow the next general election.
I loathe Twitter. It panders to those with attention deficit disorder and is the ideal medium for a small group of people to start an avalanche of received opinion. The brevity of message length more or less precludes intelligent discussion and so Twitter tends to bypass the brainy bits of the brain and become merely an emotional thermometer. The perfect tool for political manipulation and mass hysteria.
This government leaves us with so many liberties to reclaim that it is difficult to know where to start, but I think we could do worse than to grab back the freedom to discuss controversial subjects without artificial insults such as homophobic, islamophobic, sexist, and racist being used to neuter the discourse. On this subject there is an interesting article by Frank Furedi about the modern trend of labelling political or cultural views as ‘phobias’ – http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/6/
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October 19, 2009 at 5:22 pm -
Shut that door, look at the muck that’s got in here.
Twitter ye not !
Moderated – Foreign language and links to injuncted material removed.
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9
October 19, 2009 at 6:07 pm -
Good post, pretty much summed up my feelings over the matter, though until this was posted I was beginning to think we were in a very small (heterosexual) minority.
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October 19, 2009 at 6:50 pm -
I’ve always had great respect for MP, ever since his attempt to live off the dole for a week and subsequent acceptance that it had changed his mind over benefits and poverty – the problem with JM’s article, however, was that it linked the tragic death of a 33 year-old man with his gay lifestyle, when there was absolutely nothing to connect the two issues. She wouldn’t have suggested a connection with a straight lifestyle, so why try in this case? It was crass and unnecessary – bleating about “political correctness” is no defence for poor journalism.
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11
October 19, 2009 at 7:23 pm -
Vimes, as far as I can see Moir criticised Gately’s “glittering, hedonistic celebrity” lifestyle. She was being sniffy about libertines not gays.
If Twitterers are going to attack poor journalism we’re in for a torrent of attacks that will bring the internet to it’s knees; but that won’t happen because they were not a bunch of literary connoisseurs attacking poor journalistic standards, they were a herd of politically correct sheep bleating in unison, and thankfully there aren’t enough of them to clog up the information superhighway.
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October 19, 2009 at 7:34 pm -
“should any ’single interest’ group be able to dictate by coercion or any other means, what the majority of the population reads?” I asked.
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Who is trying to defend poor journalism, Vimes? I disliked the content and assumptions made by Jan Moir in her article – but I only read her words once my attention was drawn to them in the echoes of the roar of outrage from Twitterland. The subject under examination in this thread is whether Twitterers can, on the one hand, congratulate themselves for “..rendering Carter-Ruck’s injunction against the Guardian newspaper meaningless …” so that the press is free to report and comment on the issue, while on the other hand recruiting an outraged band to object, complain, lobby and spit-feathers about a subjective opinion which they feel should NOT be read by anyone whatsoever. -
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October 19, 2009 at 7:49 pm -
“She was being sniffy about libertines not gays.”
Aye, right, as we say in Weegieland – as a non-tweeter, I probably care less for Twitter, than for JM, if that’s possible. Having said that, anyone who puts one over on Carter-Ruck is fine by me – see libel lawyers, see parasitical lifeforms.
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14
October 19, 2009 at 8:52 pm -
ANY-way, the whole subject of the way Twitter was used to reflect the rise in the prevalent pink pulse in response to Jan Moir’s article was discussed on tonight’s PM show on Radio 4. The programme’s website is a-buzz, apparently.
Hmm. I’ve got a chicken and I’ve got an egg; which do I tackle first?
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October 19, 2009 at 8:56 pm -
I expect La Moir is thinking of the old adage; all publicity is good publicity. I admit to reading her columns online, I wonder how many new readers she has now. There will be many just reading them now, in the hope they can slag her off again, plus the ones who agree with her.
To coin an old phrase- “Bums on seats”
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October 19, 2009 at 9:07 pm -
@ bloke with nadgers
“…they were a herd of politically correct sheep bleating in unison, and thankfully there aren’t enough of them to clog up the information superhighway.”
Could not agree more.
Carter Ruck censorship attempt situation very important, otoh, the irate bum bandits should not even figure on the radar.
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October 19, 2009 at 9:14 pm -
I don’t think La Moir or the Mail expected this level of argument against what was published. I suppose the editors figured that if they could get away with publishing yards of column inches from a fuzzy-faced and deluded anorexic lampooning ugly and interbred countryfolk for weeks on end with the full, two-patronising-barrels of her undisguised towny dislike, then Jan Moir could say anything.
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October 19, 2009 at 10:32 pm -
If the “fuzzy-faced and deluded anorexic” you refer to is the one who complains that the locals keep shooting at her mailbox and that she can’t find a suitable man then she needs to understand that confessional journalists often get shot at and never get laid. The average British bloke doesn’t want a jaundiced view of his inept romantic fumblings splashed all over tomorrow’s chip wrapping. Her blighted love life is more due to the lack of a legally enforcible pre-nuptial gagging order than to the fact that she looks like a particularly hairy chimp in winter plumage.
Jan Moir is another lady with “big hair”, and like a lot of big hairy ladies this is a defence mechanism. The horned toad when alarmed can inflate itself to twice its normal body size, and if this doesn’t do the trick it can go on to squirt blood from ducts in the corners of its eyes! Jan Moir, unable to precisely mimic the toad, contents herself with back-combing like buggery and squirting bile from sacs in the dark corners of her brain.
Other similarities between toads and journalists: sliminess, croaky voices and genital warts.
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October 19, 2009 at 11:29 pm -
‘ …and like a lot of big hairy ladies this is a defence mechanism. …’
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I’ve finally got my lurex wrestling-kit on: in the blink of a lazy-eye I could now strike a heftily alarming pose, ready to repulse any insults with a quick squirt of haematic liquid from the tear-duct at the first suggestion of an insult. Bring it on! -
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October 20, 2009 at 12:15 am -
… As Mick McManus McNadgers quivers in the corner performing a vertical splash, Giant Haystacks Smudd delivers a flying drop kick to the back of the cranium … and it’s all over! McNadgers is out of the ring and out of the fight!
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October 20, 2009 at 12:34 am -
Bout-commentator Dickie Davis is so surprised that Smudd can move at all; for several prime-time moments he is speechless as the Lardo-Lass flings her full tonnage into the ring from a flimsy stool, lands upon and squidges the astonished Mick M. McNadgers from under an unlikely air-pocket into the quivering crowd. As Dickie’s mouth gawps silently to a nail-chewing ITV Saturday afternoon audience, the white streak at his forelock begins to smoulder before bursting rewarding into flames to loud cheers throughout the land.
ITV’s figures have never been higher. Oh yes! -
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October 20, 2009 at 1:31 am -
I was just going to say who cares about what the ‘poisonous’ mail and its equally poisonous columnists say, but Gloria and Bloke have made me laugh and i can no longer summonds a rant about how some people are obsessed with the sexual habits of others. Is this all really about free speach . . .
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October 20, 2009 at 10:37 pm -
What’s all this fuss about Twitterers’ hyposcrisy? There is none that I can discern.
Freedom of speech does not equate to freedom from consequences – I’ve not heard anyone saying that Moir shouldn’t have been allowed to write what she did; most have merely been taking advantage of the fact that while she is free to speak, so they are too, and using this to ensure that her speech has appropriate consequences with regard to her reputation.
She picked a fight she’s not going to win – they are winning the argument.
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