UK Press Censor News

Press censor Impress has named the first 10 media organisations to sign up including: New Internationalist, The Ferret, The Caerphilly Observer,  The Port Talbot Magnet, The Southport Reporter and View Digital

Walter Merricks, the chairman of Impress, said that it has also officially submitted an application to the Press Recognition Panel for recognition under the controversial royal charter:

This marks a new era for independent press regulation. It is a significant moment for us and one which has taken a lot of hard work to achieve; we believe that we meet the requirements for recognition and we will now wait and see if the panel accepts that we are independent and effective, properly funded and able to protect the public.

The recognition process is expected to last at least four months.

The Muslim Council of Britain held a conference this week entitled Terrorism and Extremism -- how should British Muslims respond?

And the response seems to be to call for the censorship of reports about the terrorism and criminalisation of criticism of the extremism.

Calls were made for the UK's newspaper censor, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), to censor press stories critical of groups of people rather than the current remit to investigate press stories that are unfair to individuals.

The Muslim Council of Britain both called for that to change, amid what some claim is slanted press coverage of Islamic issues. The coincil had previously criticized media coverage of issues such as that of Muslim grooming gangs , in which groups of men in areas such as Rotherham, Derby, Bristol and Oxfordshire were accused of raping thousands of children. Representatives of the MCB have said that linking the story to the Muslim faith was not fair.

Miqdaad Versi, Assistant Secretary General of the MCB, said that there is currently no recourse under the press standards code when a particular group is attacked by the media:

There's been many examples in the media, where we've tried to go to the code but we've not been able to, he said. If there is a way that a representative group can launch a complaint on that issue, that would be valuable.

One of the most high-profile cases in which IPSO rejected a claim of discrimination came last spring, and involved a column in the Sun newspaper about the migration crisis. Controversial columnist Katie Hopkins suggested that Europe should use gunboats to stop migrants crossing the Mediterranean, and compared those fleeing their home countries to cockroaches. But IPSO rejected complaints over her column, because it did not refer to specific individuals.

The conference also discussed the restoration of blasphemy laws, abolished in 2008 after they had largely fallen into disuse by then, given that the last successful prosecution was in 1977.

On the topic Keith Vaz MP, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, told Al Arabiya News that he would have no problem with blasphemy laws being reintroduced"

It should apply to all religions. If we have laws, they should apply to everybody. Religions are very special to people. And therefore I have no objection to them... but it must apply equally to everybody.

David Anderson QC spoke on the topic saying he would not object to a public debate over the issue, although had doubts over whether such laws should be reintroduced:

Personally I'm not sure whether I would welcome a blasphemy law, because I think we have to be free to make fun of each other. We even have to be free to offend each other, he said. [But] I would have no problem with the idea of a democratic debate on whether there is room for some kind of blasphemy law.

Miqdaad Versi said:

Muslim communities need to be able to respond to accusations Muslims, or against the Prophet, in a more effective way. Whether there should be legislation is something that really is a more complicated question.

Comment: One religion's blasphemer is another religion's saint

16th November 2015. See article from rorate-caeli.blogspot.com . Thanks to Alan

Here's a spectacular illustration of the big problem with blasphemy laws: religions contradict, and therefore blaspheme, one another.

This Catholic web site presents, and accurately translates into English, criticisms of Muhammad and Islam made by a priest who has been declared a saint. Notably, St john Bosco was a kindly and gentle old chap, deploring corporal punishment at a time when Dr Arnold of Rugby firmly believed in a good flogging in front of the assembled house. He observed:

"It would take too long to tell you all the stories about this famous impostor (...) Mohamed's religion consists of a monstrous mixture of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity. Mohamed propagated his religion, not through miracles or persuasive words, but through the force of arms. [It is] a religion that favors every sort of licentiousness and which, in a short time, allowed Mohamed to become the leader of a troop of brigands. Along with them he raided the countries of the East and conquered the people, not by introducing the Truth, not by miracles or prophecy; but for one reason only: to raise his sword over the heads of the conquered shouting: believe or die".

Walter Merricks has been appointed chair of the government approved press censor, Impress. The censor has been set up along the lines envisaged in the report by Brian Leveson.

Impress will operate as a rival to Ipsi, the self censor set up by several major newspapers in preference to the state sanctioned group. Ipso follows along the lines of the defunct Press Complaints Commission. Ipso started work two months ago. Impress yields the weapon of government sanctions that newspapers have so far tried to avoid.

Merricks trained as a solicitor before becoming the first director of Camden Law Centre. He taught welfare law and freelanced as a legal journalist before joining the Law Society, which was then the solicitors' regulator, in 1985. In 1996, he left to become an ombudsman, first in insurance and then in financial services.

After recruiting the other members of its board, Impress will have to consider whether to seek recognition from the press recognition panel. The panel, chaired by David Wolfe QC, was formally incorporated this week under a Royal charter established by the government.

Impress will take account of views expressed by the publishers that it hopes to sign up before making up its mind. But Merricks acknowledges that seeking recognition might be seen by Ipso as a hostile act. That's because recognition of a regulator will trigger provisions in section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 that will allow a court to unfairly award costs against a publisher even if a claim against the publisher is unsuccessful. This injustice is designed as a punishment for newspapers not signing up for state censorship.

Update: Meanwhile it's all a bit complicated at IPSO

10th November 2014. See  article from  theguardian.com

The new press regulator's rules must be simplified if it is to fulfil promises to be fair and independent that were made by the industry after the Leveson inquiry, its chairman said on Sunday.

In his first speech to the industry since the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) was launched in September, Sir Alan Moses suggested the rules governing the watchdog are so complicated that it was struggling to work out how to levy fines on the industry. Referring to the ability to fine newspapers up to £1m, the chairman said:

Proper successful independent regulation will not be established by manic firing of a big bazooka. And anyway we don't know how to fire it: the instruction booklet for the use of so novel a weapon is rather too complicated for we ordinary mortals at Ipso to understand.