UK Press Censor News

Campaigners fear a new government censorship policy could see comedians who make jokes about transgender issues hauled in front of a judge.

A barrister warned telling jokes about trans people, like Ricky Gervais in his most recent show, could be criminalised if a new Home Office plan is put in place.

The new censorship plan is due to be published shortly, with a Home Office minister saying it will set out steps to increase the reporting of all forms of hate crime -- including hate crimes targeting sexual orientation or transgender identity. They will see people accused of non crime hate incidents [NCHIs], which are recorded on police systems.

It comes after the Court of Appeal ruled that College of Policing guidance telling forces to record incidents believed to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person as NCHIs violates the European Convention on Human Rights

Sarah Phillimore, a barrister from Fair Cop, a group describing itself as a gender critical organisation of lawyers, police officers and writers, said:

It is astonishing that legislators are planning to expand the discredited and unlawful practice of recording non-crime hate incidents [NCHIs].

A Home Office spokesperson responded:

These claims are completely wrong - there are no plans to expand recording of non-crime hate incidents, nor will we criminalise comedians or introduce a complaint scheme. Free speech is a fundamental right and we will always protect it. [clearly not true when the government is introducing its Online Censorship Bill]

Up until now, the UK government has always indicated that newspaper websites would not be caught up in the new internet censorship regime proposed in the Government's Online Harms white paper.

However it now seems that the government has backtracked lest every websites claims to be a news service.

The Daily Mail reports that Julian Knight, chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has written to Culture Minister John Whittingdale over the proposed laws, after Home Office lawyers claimed that granting a publishers exemption' would create loopholes. One source close to the ministerial arguments over the proposed laws said:

Government lawyers are arguing that the publishers exemption would allow just anyone to claim it, so for instance you would have The Isis Times being able to distribute beheading videos.

The Tory MP Julian Knight told Whittingdale that Ministers in both DCMS and the Home Office should resolve the impasse by allowing an exemption for authenticated and reliable news sources.

The Government has yet to respond, amid concerns that any action may be delayed by wrangling over legislation to stop harmful online material and fears that antagonising powerful American-owned online platforms might jeopardise post-Brexit trade talks with the US.

Political correctness is supposed to be based on politeness and equality for all, but it doesn't really work out like that. It turns out to be little more than a glorified pecking order system where those who shout loudest, or can drum up the most aggressive lynch mob, grab the best PC rules and everyone else can go to hell.

But the rules get a little difficult to rationalise and pin down when they run into officialdom. And the UK press censor had the unenviable task of adjudicating on terms used to characterise child abuse grooming gangs in the press.

A complaint was lodged by Sikh, Hindu and Pakistani-Christian groups, concerned about the liberal use of the word 'Asian' in the Sunday Mirror s investigation into child-grooming gangs in Telford. The Sunday Mirror spoke of 'epidemic levels of child sexual exploitation' and 'that up to 1,000 girls, had been abused by Asian men'.

But the term Asian is far too broad and smears innocent communities, said the complainants. But IPSO rejected their complaint. The regulator ruled that it was not inaccurate to say the men were "mainly Asian". Nor did it give a significantly misleading impression.

An article from Spiked comments that:

The media's use of Asian to describe grooming gangs not only masks the ethno-religious identity of the perpetrators -- it also throws Sikhs, Hindus, Pakistani-Christians and every other Asian under the bus. Gangs of Indian, Japanese and Korean men are not rampaging across Britain's towns and cities, sexually abusing underage white girls. The men doing so are predominantly of Pakistani-Muslim heritage.

Of course the IPSO logic has to twist around the PC rule of the highest pecking order, that the word 'muslim' must never be attached to any wrong doing. Surely based on the totally reasonable logic that only a small proportion of muslims are involved. But why then does IPSO rule that it is OK to use the word 'Asian' when only a small proportion of Asians are involved?

IPSO were on firmer ground when adjudicating on a related complaint. A complaint against The Sunday Times was upheld. IPSO ruled that the paper had published an inaccurate headline when it claimed that Asians make up 80% of child groomers. The Muslim Council of Britain's Miqdaad Versi called for a correction to clarify that the 80% referred specifically to grooming gangs, not all child groomers.