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In my capacity as the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, I wrote to the Chief Executive of Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes, on 24th April to complain about its reprimand of Eamonn Holmes. According to the regulator, the breakfast television presenter had said something that “could have undermined people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the Coronavirus and the advice of mainstream sources of public health information“. Holmes’s sin, in Ofcom’s eyes, was to say on ITV’s This Morning on 13th April that any theory running counter to the official Government line – such as the one linking 5G masts and COVID19 – deserved to be discussed in the mainstream media. This was in spite of him saying the 5G conspiracy was “not true and incredibly stupid”. Ofcom said this view – the view that such theories deserved a public hearing, not that they were in any way right or plausible – was “ill-judged and risked undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence”.

In my letter to Dame Melanie, I pointed out that if Ofcom is going to prohibit views being discussed on television that might risk undermining viewers’ trust in public authorities during this crisis, that could easily be extended to anyone challenging the Government’s official line on a number of issues, not just the link between the virus and 5G masts. For instance, would Ofcom have reprimanded a broadcaster that challenged the advice of Public Health England, issued on 25th February, that it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected”? That advice was supposedly based on “scientific evidence”, yet as we now know it turned out to be wrong and the fact that hospitals discharged elderly patients back into care homes without first confirming that they were not infected with COVID-19 is one of the reasons that, according to the ONS, as of 1st May, 37.4% of all Covid deaths in England and Wales have occurred in care homes.

As I said in my letter, given that bad advice and misinformation about the virus is being disseminated in the public square, both by authorities like Public Health England and conspiracy theorists like David Icke, the best way to minimise harm befalling the public is not to prohibit public discussion of that advice and information, but to encourage it, so that members of the public (and care home managers) can make informed decisions about what advice to follow and what information to believe. To take the example of the theory Eamonn Holmes was referring to, if broadcasters aren’t allowed to discuss whether there’s a connection between 5G masts and the symptoms associated with COVID-19 – and present its exponents with the overwhelming evidence that there is no such connection – people are more likely to believe the theory, not less. They will think, “If it’s untrue, why is discussion of it forbidden by a state regulator?” As the US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in his famous Whitney v. California opinion in 1927, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies… the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” In other words, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Letter to Ofcom Asking For its Censorious Coronavirus Guidance to be WithdrawnRead More »

You’ll recall that I wrote to an administrator at De Montfort University in April to complain about his high-handed treatment of one of our members – a journalism student – who’d been put through a disciplinary process for supposedly bringing the University into disrepute. This was after a left-wing activist had lodged a complaint about him following a routine Twitter spat. The University concluded that our member was indeed guilty and threatened him with expulsion if he repeated the offence. This is a clear breach of his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as being contrary to the University’s own free speech policies and inconsistent with its legal duty to uphold free speech under s.43 of Education (Nº 2) Act 1986, as I pointed out in my letter. I asked the administrator to explain himself, and warned him that we will legally challenge any further sanctions that are imposed on our member. You can read that letter here. Disappointingly, the letter wasn’t even acknowledged, let alone responded to. Consequently, I’ve written a follow-up letter, this time to De Montfort’s Vice-Chancellor, copying in Michelle Donelan MP, the Universities Minister. You can read that letter below.

De Montfort University follow-upRead More »

I wrote to Jake Verity, the President of Sheffield University Students’ Union, last month to complain that a free speech society that some of our members had set up at the University had been designated a “red risk” by the Students’ Union. That means the society’s officers have to attend “risk assessment” training and cannot invite any speakers on to campus without first having to submit a list of prospective speakers to the Students’ Union three weeks ahead of time for “full and final approval”. The students reached out to the FSU for help and, with the aid of the Legal Advisory Council, I wrote to Mr Verity, copying in the Vice-Chancellor, reminding him that both the Students’ Union and the University have a legal duty to uphold freedom of expression, and asking him to reassure me that he won’t withhold approval from any speaker the society proposes to invite except in truly exceptional circumstances and when legally permitted to do so. You can read my letter here. After not receiving a reply for several weeks, I managed to attend a Zoom meeting of the Council of the Students’ Union as an “observer”. At that meeting I managed to get a Council member to ask Mr Verity why he still hadn’t responded to my letter. As a result, he did respond the following day, but he didn’t provide me with the assurances I was after. Consequently, I’ve written back, asking him to do so. You can read his letter here and my reply below.

Sheffield University follow-up letterRead More »

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, issued a call earlier this year for submissions on academic freedom to help him prepare a report for the 75th Session of the General Assembly in the autumn. The Free Speech Union submitted the document you can read below which, in due course, will be published on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. This document represents the views of the Directors, but not necessarily the members of the advisory councils. The FSU is indebted to Professor Eric Kaufmann for helping to write this submission.

Submission to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human RightsRead More »

One of our members – Kellie-Jay Keen, more commonly known as Posie Parker – had a petition removed by Change.org on the grounds that information contained in her petition was “identified as hate speech”. The petition read: “Keep the dictionary definition of woman to mean adult human female.” This was in response to another petition calling for the Oxford English Dictionary to change the definition of woman to include “transgender woman”. Change.org claims to be a politically neutral platform that believes in free speech, yet it has taken down Posie Parker’s petition and left the other one on its platform where it has attracted nearly 35,000 signatures. We have written to Change.org asking them to reinstate Posie Parker’s petition, admit that they were wrong to remove it and acknowledge that saying a woman is an adult human female is not “hate speech”.

Letter to Change.org regarding Posie ParkerRead More »

On April 20th, Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, reprimanded both ITV and London Live for comments made by Eamonn Holmes and David Icke about links between 5G technology and coronavirus. Holmes’s sin, according to the regulator, was to say on ITV’s This Morning that the theory linking 5G and coronavirus deserved to be discussed in the mainstream media, even though he agreed with his co-presenter that it was “not true and incredibly stupid”. Ofcom said that this view – the view that the theory deserved a public hearing – was “ill-judged and risked undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence” and could lead to “significant harm to the public”. (You can read the adjudications here.)

The Free Speech Union regards these decisions as highly inimical to freedom of expression for reasons that we have set out in this letter, which was sent to Ofcom on April 24th. During the coronavirus crisis, the state has substantially increased its powers and imposed restrictions on long-established liberties. However, no such restrictions have been placed by the Government on the right to free speech. In fact, it is vital that this right should be upheld so that the Government’s decision to impose wide-ranging restrictions can be scrutinised and challenged by broadcasters and others. We have asked Ofcom to withdraw these sanctions and issue a press release affirming the importance of free speech and assuring the public it will not seek to stifle the expression of dissenting views without strong and compelling reasons for concluding that such expression will cause harm.

Letter to Ofcom Following its Decision to Sanction ITV and London LiveRead More »