…and stayed not for an answer.

Extracted from this Guardian article:

RT Loses Challenge Against Claims of Bias in Novichok Reporting Mark Sweney

The Kremlin-backed news channel RT has lost a high court challenge to overturn a ruling by the UK media regulator that it broadcast biased programmes relating to the novichok poisoning in Salisbury and the war in Syria. Ofcom fined RT £200,000 after determining that seven programmes, [concerning the Skripal poisonings, the US’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, and the Ukrainian government’s position on Nazism and the treatment of Roma people] were in breach of UK broadcasting rules relating to due impartiality regarding matters of political controversy. […] RT contended that Ofcom had not taken into account the fact that the “dominant media narrative” at the time of the poisonings – that Russia was to blame – meant it could leave that view out of its own programming. The broadcaster also said the requirement to be impartial interfered with its right to freedom of expression. Lord Justice Dingemans, who delivered the high court judgment remotely on Friday, said: “At present, the broadcast media maintains [sic] a reach and immediacy that remains unrivalled by other media. Indeed, there is reason to consider that the need [for due impartiality] is at least as great, if not greater than ever before, given current concerns about the effect on the democratic process of news manipulation and of fake news.” He said RT was not restricted from broadcasting its point of view on the Salisbury poisonings, the war on Syria or events in Ukraine. “The only requirement was that, in the programme as broadcast, RT provided balance to ensure that there was ‘due impartiality.’ […] RT’s “concept of a dominant media narrative is a nebulous one, which it would be difficult to define, let alone identify by any acceptable criteria in a particular case.” He added: “In any event the chilling effect that such uncertainty would or might produce for the broadcast media, would, in my judgment, be likely to inhibit rather than enhance their freedom of expression.”

This post is not about the absurd and self-contradictory official story on the Skripal poisonings, or the presence of authentic, goose-stepping, swastika-waving Nazis in the CIA-organised Maidan revolution in the Ukraine. It’s solely about the judge’s assertion that the “concept of a dominant media narrative is a nebulous one, which it would be difficult to define…”

I don’t find it hard to define. Take the case of climate change hysteria and its attendant trillion pound policies, for example. I’d say that there is a dominant media narrative that says that this is a crisis, that 97% of scientists and prepubescent schoolgirls agree that it’s a crisis, and that anyone denying that it’s a crisis is a Big-Oil-financed conspiracist flat-earther blogging in a basement in his mother’s underpants. Nothing nebulous about that. Nothing nebulous about academics being sacked for telling the truth about polar bears and coral reefs either, or senile national treasures lying through their dentures about it on prime time TV.

Now, take the case of a journalist who happens to agree with the above argument as to the existence of a “dominant media narrative” on the subject of climate change hysteria, based, as it is, on the evidence of one’s eyes, of any google search you care to mention, and on the professed censorship polices of the BBC, Guardian, New York Times, etc. Let’s call him, for the sake of argument, Delingpole, and imagine, for the sake of argument, that he had recently written this:

The eco-fascists are showing their true face in the Coronavirus pandemic. Activists claiming to be from Extinction Rebellion have put up posters exulting in the loss of human life. “Corona is the cure – Humans are the disease.” The official national leadership of Extinction Rebellion has since sought to distance itself from the posters, claiming that the stickers are ‘not in line with what XR believes or stands for’ and blaming ‘far right groups.’ But this should be taken with a pinch of salt. First, the XR East Midlands Twitter account which boasted about the stunt is widely followed by XR groups around the country... Second, the posters are entirely in line with the thinking of the green movement.. As high-level environmentalist organisation The Club of Rome once infamously wrote:“The Earth has a cancer. The cancer is man.” This is genuinely how many so-called environmentalists think. It dates back at least to the era of late 18th century doom monger Thomas Malthus and is evident in everything from the burblings of Sir David Attenborough… to the entire field of ecology (predicated on the notion that man is a detrimental presence on the planet).

It’s all true of course. But if he wants to avoid a £200,000 fine from Ofcom, he would do well to accede to the judge’s demand that he “. .provide balance to ensure that there was ‘due impartiality’” and add a paragraph or two pointing out that many mainstream media consider Extinction Rebellion to be a brave and necessary addition to our democratic debate, that gluing yourself to the top of a tube train to prove what a twat you are draw attention to man’s destruction of the planet is a right protected by our unwritten constitution, that the East Midlands is a noble region noted for its stalwart defence of workers’ rights during the Luddite uprising, that Thomas Malthus was a caring pastor ever attentive to the needs of his flock, and that Sir David Attenborough has all his own teeth, and doesn’t burble.

Or else.

We at Cliscep are not covered by Ofcom, so we don’t have to kowtow to the diktats of the so-far-up-the-arse-of-MI6-that-Mark-Sweney-is-shrieking-with-pleasure Star Chamber that is Ofcom. And I’m outside the reach of British justice (or will be, if I ever get round to applying for French nationality.)

Far be it from me to criticise the ruling of a learned judge, but anyone who thinks that the words “dominant,” “media,” and “narrative” are nebulous, and that “the chilling effect” [of defining the term“dominant media narrative”] would “… be likely to inhibit rather than enhance their freedom of expression.” needs his wig examined.