Moirgate

It seems I may have to review my position on blogging. The last two weeks have seen a number of significant news stories that have revolved around people eagerly expressing their viewpoint in the virtual sphere, both with equally important consequences.

The attempted injunction placed on The Guardian newspaper, barring them from reporting a question asked in Parliament by an MP relating to the Trafigura dumping scandal was rendered worthless when speculation from both old and new forms of media ran wild.

This seems to have been a perhaps unintentionally positive usage of the multitude of options for people wishing to speak their mind on anything and everything they can lay their hands on. The injunction was subsequently lifted and valid questions were raised as to how any lawyers could have the temerity to attempt to silence parliamentary privilege.

The Jan Moir affair is, I feel, slightly different, but has had equally satisfying results in this case at least. In case you are not aware of the circumstances of this story, Moir, who writes for the Mail and should therefore have set some alarm bells off in this context, wrote a particularly venomous piece about the late Stephen Gately.

I won't analyse the article here, as I feel I cannot do any better than the brilliant columnist Charlie Brooker did on the Guardian website, which you can and should read, here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir

There are several interesting/pleasing things about people rightly reacting to this nasty piece of so-called journalism. I will make it clear that I do indeed detest this style of writing anyway, right wing hacks on large salaries for producing the most repugnant and outspoken pieces they can on a regular basis. Most of them are possibly shits in real life too, which makes it reasonable to hate them.

This case also has flashbacks to the Brand/Ross saga of 2008, which was of course largely driven with glee by the Daily Mail, which reserved a hatred for Brand, who stood for the things that readers of the paper couldn't stomach, essentially someone who had once drunk and taken drugs to excess and then gone on to make a success of themselves.

The Mail clamoured for the sacking of both, although noticeably focused on Brand. Whatever the outcome, the paper was engaging in one of its favourite pastimes, terrorising the BBC, which it did so effectively on that occasion.

The important thing to notice was that the number of complaints about the show, which were little more than a dribble to start with, inflated massively once the news media got hold of the story, and so people who would not even have been anywhere near their radio sets during the time of the broadcast were suddenly leaping on the nearest bandwagon, destination Press Complaints Commission.

Therefore it is at least partially satisfying that this time the shit has landed, via the PCC, at the offices of the Mail, but less so in that one would have to assume the same band wagon jumpers happily guided this one down the same route.

It is representative of that 'quick, have a defined opinion to order' culture we seem to embrace so readily in this country, and whilst in this case it was certainly justified, that is not reason to celebrate it unreservedly.

And I noticed that the BBC stayed a significant distance away from widely reporting the storm of complaints the Mail had generated.