GEEKOSPHERE SIGNPOST:

Graham Linehan's blog
I found this, expecting to find a similar brand of hilarious ranting that I read on Charlie Brooker's column for the Guardian.

Instead I found a signpost to an article in the Scottish Sunday Express concerning the survivors of the Dunblane massacre. But don't read my summary, read the story yourself. Go and do it now, otherwise the following will not make sense.

What Linehan mentions at the end is the balance between a free press and the censorship of it. This is a thorny issue, but in the scandal around the above story one has to deal with it.

The liberal side of me cries out that this kind of journalistic mistake is an isolated incident and the tragic price we pay for our freedom of speech. The resulting campaign for an apology is my expected reaction and I am glad it happened. I would imagine that in the future when journalists forget that they are meant to inform the public rather than conjur scandal from some celebrity candy ether a similar uproar will occur. We cannot drift down the river of increased censorship lest we come to the shores of STATE CENSORSHIP (something my other blog has ranted about recently).

The side of me that dips his toe on the right thinks that perhaps we should empower our ombudsmen and regulatory bodies to prevent this kind of intrusive journalism. Actually, come to think of it, the strong ombudsmen (Ofcom, Enerygywatch, Trading Standards etc) seem only to help people so perhaps this is not a bad idea.

But what strikes me as the secondary injustice in all of this is the way SSE has turned their apology into both advertising for their Brand and weaseled our of blame and responsibility. But, many many people signed the petition and many people will not purchase the paper again.

Anyway, I drew attention to it here because Graham Linehan (who is a man I respect) said that this is an issue that journalists should cover and this being one of the few places I am published I felt it best to mention it.

R.