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opinions on last night's question time
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Edited Oct 25, 2009, 14:19
Re: opinions on last night's question time
Oct 25, 2009, 14:19
handofdave wrote:
I'd expect the BNP rank and file would be taking orders to chill out while they're getting all this press.

The problem is whether or not the rank and file can take orders. The BNP's legal officer has already decried Griffin's attempt to make the BNP appeal to the mainstream with the QT appearance and suggested:
"perhaps there needs to be a few 'white riots' around the country a la the Brixton riots of the 1980s before the idiot white liberal middle class and their ethnic middle-class fellow travellers wake up"

handofdave wrote:
My concern is that, if the criteria for censorship is how the public reacts to someone being on TV, do you apply that to everyone? What if you had someone who is anti-BNP on the air and it correlated with a rise in attacks? Do you ban them too?

Why is this still being framed as a censorship / freedom of speech issue? It isn't. Why is that so difficult to take on board for so many people?

The BBC have never invited me onto Question Time. Are they censoring me? It's an editorial decision. The BNP are regularly interviewed on the BBC. They get to make Party Political Broadcasts on the BBC. Failing to invite them onto QT is NOT censorship.

I publish (irregularly) a blog. I have never, and never will, invite a BNP member to contribute to it. Am I guilty of censorship? Of course I'm bloody not. Censorship is -- in the context we're talking about -- state intervention to prevent certain people from expressing their views. The editorial policy of the QT producer has nothing to do with it. And the right to free speech does not imply the right to appear on whatever TV programme you want.

It's not a free speech issue. It's not a censorship issue. If you disagree, then explain why.

handofdave wrote:
I'm not just talking about abstract concepts of free speech, here... if legal precedents can be set against the BNP that can end up coming back around and sabotaging progressives too, it might be wise to beware the impulse to censure.

What "legal precedents"? How does an editorial decision by one BBC programme constitute a legal precedent? Are newspapers setting legal precedents when they decide to publish one article rather than another? Or employ one columnist over another?
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