Paris Brown, the Telegraph’s Thatcher comments and the changing shape of public debate
In a world where seemingly every other thought from Joe Public is, often on a whim, published for the world to see and as newspapers lose their grip over their long-held monopoly setting nationwide opinion, Raymond Snoddy looks at how social media has revolutionised public debate – and charts its pitfalls after a busy week of terrible tweets and censored comments.
There has never really been any doubt about it – using social media is one of the ultimate double-edged swords. It can cost you your job, your friends, a lot of money or, even if none of the above, if you are not very careful it can make you look extremely foolish.
At the same time it can also release unprecedented quantities of abusive bile – much of it anonymous – into the public discourse and provide a field day for the mad, the bad and conspiracy theorists everywhere.
Apart from all of that, social media, and Twitter in particular, amounts to the greatest communication revolution of the century and one that will continue to mutate and grow in influence for decades.
This week has been a perfect time for observing the double-edged nature of Twitter in action.
Radio 4 broke into You and Yours a few minutes before 1pm on Monday to announce that Lady Thatcher had died.
The BBC was fast but the news was already on Twitter and the comments and assessments of her life and political career were not far behind.
It was the perfect example of what Twitter has rather inadvertently become – a superb news feed that uses the eyes and ears of its millions of followers to break stories day-in-day out, often with astonishing speed.
Those who say they don’t use Twitter because they don’t want to know what someone has had for breakfast really don’t get it. It may have been that once, and something like that may indeed have been the rather vague intention of the original founders, but then it turned into the greatest news and comment collective the world has ever seen.
And then there is what happened to the Daily Telegraph this week when editor Tony Gallagher was forced to close down online tribute pages to Margaret Thatcher because of comments that were particularly abusive and personal.
Remarks by Gallagher highlighted the difference between online and traditional media.
We wouldn’t have printed abusive letters so why tolerate it online, the Telegraph editor argued, perfectly reasonably.
Naturally someone calling himself Joe Public then noticed the Barclay brothers’ common ownership of the Telegraph and the Ritz hotel where the former Prime Minister spent her last days.
“The Telegraph: Beacon of free speech. Did Barclay brothers tell you to do it? She was their guest at the Ritz,” Joe tweeted.
The abuse will never end on Twitter because one of its great glories is that it is a completely unmediated service. With tweets sometimes bursting out at the rate of several thousand a second it could never be anything else. Slowing down the feed in order to monitor the flow would destroy the whole point.
Anyway, as the good comedian Rowan Atkinson – as opposed to the Leveson-loving comedians – argued earlier this year, it is wrong to outlaw insult. And “criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.”
Long live the power to insult even though the street parties to celebrate Lady Thatcher’s death appear repulsive and damaging to the reputation of the Left. You can be sure Lady Thatcher would not have minded a bit.
In fact a friend, after some trepidation, did indeed tell her that at a recent TUC Congress they were selling kits to celebrate her death.
There was a twinkle in the former Prime Minister’s eye and she took a delight that she could still upset the Lefties “merely by having a pulse.”
As we have seen she can even upset them by not having a pulse.
Leaving aside abuse, Twitter and the public discourse, being rash on what you say on social networks can seriously damage your career as 17-year-old Paris Brown has found out to her cost.
There has been Twitter abuse of the Daily Mail for turning it’s formidable fire-power on a young woman not due to take up her £15,000 a year job representing young peoples’ views on policing until July.
It was seen by some as bullying and taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Alas it a job she will never take up because of her, to say the least, outspoken views, on everything from drinks and drugs to immigrants and homosexuality.
The Mail on Sunday of course, like its daily sibling, has an agenda on the waste of money from “elected” Police Commissioners and a greater antipathy towards what it sees as the even greater waste of money on “non-jobs.”
But Paris Brown, and everyone who steps forward to the keyboard to communicate through Twitter and Facebook have got to take responsibility for what they write even if they are hiding behind a pseudonym.
At least thanks are due to Lord McAlpine for clarifying the rules of engagement. Libel someone on Twitter and what is seen as a little passing frivolity is still libel.
Media lawyers salivating about the prospects of a whole new area of business opening up before them are equally clear that re-tweeting is re-publishing and therefore that too is a potential libel. Those who write on their profiles that re-tweeting does not imply endorsement are probably deluding themselves about their legal position.
So apart from avoiding libel charges what should be the ground rules for having a happy and fulfilling time on Twitter?
It’s time to avoid tweets such as “Good morning everyone” or “the sun is shining in Neasden.” Those days are over.
Beware, as Paris Brown advises, falling into the trap “of behaving with bravado on social networking sites.”
When criticising named individuals never say anything you wouldn’t say to their face.
To Tweet is to face abuse. Simply ignore rude people particularly if they haven’t got a real name.
And be very careful about tweeting if you are not sober enough to pass a breathalyser test.
Above all else read carefully and think for a second or two before going beyond the point of no recall- pressing the Tweet button.
That’s it. Off to write some tweets denouncing the Daily Mail for its ridiculous attack on the “left-wing bias of the BBC” for daring to reflect the divisive legacy of Thatcherism.