Gagging For What? – Trafigura vs The BBC

I am no fan of Trafigura, the chemical trading company responsible for creating an ecologic disaster in the Ivory Coast by dumping toxic waste and, as you may have read, for attempting to gag the House of Commons when a question was asked regarding their dumping.

Sadly, despite changes to the libel law being proposed to prevent such autocratic behaviour by individuals and businesses, they are unlikely to hit the statute books in the near future. Until then, Trafigura are free to carry on as wish, seeking so-called super-injunctions against media outlets who attempt to report on the behaviour of this company. Private Eye and the Guardian have already been targeted, which saw both Iain Hislop and Alan Rusbridger personally targeted by Carter-Ruck, the legal equivalent of a gangster’s enforcer.

Now, even 20 years ago, a company might have gotten away with this behaviour with nothing more then mentions in the Eye. The internet is a powerful tool which, as websites such as Wikileaks prove, will not be silenced.

Unless you happen to be the BBC, in which case, you may be required to withdraw reports into Trafigura. As the skeptic blog Don’t Get Fooled Again puts it:

Late last week the BBC chose to delete from its website a damning Newsnight investigation into the Trafigura scandal, following legal threats from the company and its controversial lawyers, Carter-Ruck.

Previously, other media outlets including the Times and the Independent, had withdrawn stories about the case, amid concerns that the UK press is choosing to engage in self-censorship, rather than risk a confrontation with such a powerful company in the UK’s archaic and one-sided libel courts.

The BBC is a dominant player within the UK media, and its independence – supposedly guaranteed by the millions it receives from licence-payers each year – is vital both to its public service function and to its global reputation.

Freedom of speech means very little without an effective and independent media – if it’s true that the BBC’s independence can so easily be compromised by legal threats, then this sets a very dangerous precedent for the future.

The mainstream UK media has so far assiduously avoided reporting on the BBC’s climbdown. Yet it’s an issue that raises serious questions about the state of press freedom in Britain, at a time of unprecedented attacks on the media.

To help subvert this latest attempt to muzzle the media, please embed this video on your blog, and link to this PDF [Link begins PDF download] of the original story.

It’s criminal enough that this company is killing and maiming people in one of the most poverty stricken parts of the world, let alone their attempts to censor both Parliament and the media. Trafigura deserve to be in court, but certainly not in the role of prosecutor to newspaper editors. Until such time as those in-charge of Trafigura are in the dock, the media must be the ones to hold them to account.

I will not be governed by a a multinational. I will not see the media damaged further. I will not suspend my right to freedom of speech because someone tells me to.

(via …andyourelectronmicroscope)