Did the Guardian use Twitter as a weapon of free speech?
England may be becoming more well known as a nanny state gone to extremes but it always hasn’t been that way. Even back in the 18th century the question about freedom of speech and the citizen’s right to know what was happening in the halls of its parliament was fought and won by journalist and MP John Wilkes. The end result of all that was the 1688 Bill of Rights.
On Monday that freedom was threatened when The Guardian was prevented from reporting some parliamentary proceedings. In a post on Monday David Leigh wrote
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
Following that post the story erupted on Twitter and started making the rounds of blogs around the world. Much of the credit for the spread of the story has been credited to how fast it spread on Twitter with Techdirt noting
Update: After this story got spread all over the internet (especially on Twitter), it looks like Carter-Ruck backed down. Of course… the end result? Much worse than if they had never tried to gag the newspapers. A lot more people are aware of the story. Why do lawyers still think banning such things will work?
And Alan Patrick at Broadstuff who wrote
Anyway, Twitter is being used to get the message out (#trafigura) and I suspect that by trying to bottle up the “official” channels, the outcome will actually be far more damaging to the company. (A bit like the BBC banning the Sex Pistols guaranteed their popularity).
In a follow-up post once the gag order had been removed Mercedes Bunz at The Guardian wrote a post about the effect that Twitter had had on the story
As the statistical page CrowdEye shows, tweeting increased slightly yesterday evening, and a steep rise of more than 5,500 tweets including the word “Trafigura” followed this morning.
[….]
While the Guardian was prevented from reporting the question – from MP Paul Farrelly to a minister – until law firm Carter-Ruck withdrew its opposition at lunchtime today, Twitter wasn’t: instead of suppressing the story the attempt backfired. Factor in the Streisand effect, and starting here the topic spread across the internet and became the top trending topic on Twitter. The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, tweeted the gagging order with the question “Did John Wilkes live in vain?”. The gagging order was lifted after Carter-Ruck dropped its claim.
Many of us in the blogosphere, especially the more cynical members, may question the whole Twitter effect but it is a question we are hearing less of especially after incidents like this one. It makes me wonder the following about this specific case: Did The Guardian utilize Twitter as a way to get the story out there without “breaking” the gag order?
