In summer 2024, the right-wing press became greatly concerned about renewed threats to press freedom (that is, as it conceives it). This was on account of the Brazilian government blocking X, the arrest in France of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov (like Elon Musk, an avowed free speech fundamentalist), the government’s decision to stop commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, and the arrest and sentencing of those accused of inciting and/or being involved in the summer rioting.
Official reaction to the role played by social media in the riots was exploited by the right-wing commentariat to spread fears that the government was planning a crackdown on freedom of expression online, focusing in particular on hate speech and disinformation, and to warn that this could be extended to other media, including the mainstream press itself. This is the classic ‘slippery slope’ argument so beloved by such papers.
Race riots and free speech
One of those featuring in numerous articles was conspiracy theorist Bernie Spofforth, who was widely reported as being the first person to post false information about the identity of the Southport murder suspect. The rioting followed and she was subsequently arrested for allegedly stirring racial hatred by spreading false information. She claimed that she had received the information from “somebody in Southport” but could not remember who.
On 18 September Cheshire Police announced that no further action would be taken against her, because of insufficient evidence. MailOnline quoted her as saying:
“I had expressed my own views on the state of the country and its failure to protect innocent citizens, and that is still legal, but it’s very clear that a vocal part of our society wants the opinions of ordinary people like you and like me suppressed. They say they support free speech, but they mean only the speech they agree with.”
Spofforth was highlighted in an article by Isabel Oakeshott in the Telegraph in August, headlined ‘Keir Stamer is going on a terrifying crusade against free speech’. This denounced her arrest as a “grotesquely disproportionate reaction” and accused Cheshire Police of “finger-wagging” for describing her arrest as a “warning that we are all accountable for our actions, whether that be online or in person”.
Two-tier freedoms
In this, Oakeshott saw “the harnessing of the machinery of state to silence Right-leaning writers, commentators and other free thinkers [sic]” and drew parallels with the pandemic “when lockdown critics were disgracefully smeared and vilified by government agencies”. She also claimed that “we are now seeing it again, in relation to immigration”.
In her view, “the gleeful public parading of a particular cohort of (white) criminals” was “quite sinister”, but at least she refrained from sympathising with them. Not so, however, Fergus Kelly in the Express (‘Kelly’s Eye, 28 August), who claimed that the consequences of the government’s “ever narrowing parameters” of freedom of speech can be seen “in in some of the dubious prison sentences handed down to those who expressed opinions online about the riots – no matter how deeply offensive most of us would acknowledge some of those comments to be”.
Criminalising fake news and free speech?
On 16 August, the Telegraph published an article headed ‘We can no longer say that Britain is a free country’. This was by David Frost, now a regular player in this particular scare narrative, who argued that not all of those punished for their actions post-Southport were guilty of issuing threats and inciting violence. They were prosecuted, in his view, because “our legislation goes much wider than that, to criminalise far wider categories of speech and messaging. It’s now being used, brutally, by a government that has little real regard for free speech”.
The legislation in his sights was the Communications Act 2003, the Public Order Act 1986 and the Online Safety Act 2024 (somewhat awkwardly, this last was the creation of governments which he served), all of which, in his view, contain prohibitions which show that “society has developed a culture of avoiding offence and protecting people from seeing anything that might upset them, and hence of believing that some sorts of speech should be prevented” and that “the political and professional classes more broadly are obsessed with so-called misinformation or disinformation”.
Consequently, “‘fake news’ is now a crime in Britain, and people are being prosecuted for it”. Again, we are teetering at the edge of the slippery slope: “We are, in fact, all vulnerable. Say the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong moment, and any of us might find the police at our door.”
Censorious activists and free speech fundamentalists
The same line was taken by Frank Furedi in The Times, 15 August. Under the headline ‘Labour’s war on free speech is the real threat to public life’ he argued:
“Labour’s estrangement from the ideal of free speech is not confined to regulating social media. For its censorious activists, terms such as disinformation and fake news serve as a medium for delegitimising the principle of free speech … It appears that along with allies in cultural institutions, the party believes views with which it sharply disagrees are legitimate targets of censorship.”
Frost, Furedi and Oakeshott are, of course, free speech fundamentalists in the Musk mould, who believe that the press should have exactly the same ability as individuals to express itself. However, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has always argued that such freedom amounts to little more than the freedom of press owners to do exactly as they will with their property – and their employees too.
Such untrammelled press power in the hands of vast, unaccountable and frequently reactionary corporate interests is actually a threat to press freedom properly understood as the freedom of the press to safeguard the public interest, to act as the public’s watchdog and to speak truth to power – very much including corporate power.
Article first published in Media North: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North). For more from Media North, and to subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website.
