1 Aug 2012 | Index Index, minipost, United Kingdom
Dorset police announced yesterday that a 17-year-old who was arrested in the Weymouth area on suspicion of malicious communication has been issued with a harassment warning in connection to tweets sent to Olympic diver Tom Daley. The teenager has been bailed to return to the police station at a later date while the force investigates other communications on his Twitter account.
31 Jul 2012 | Tunisia
Atheist Ghazi Beji, who was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison in absentia last March for insulting Islam has written an apology to Muslims. Beji, who fled the country before being sentenced for publishing a satirical book entitled “The illusion of Islam, published the apology on his Facebook page and in an interview with Nawaat.org this week:
I belong to a very conservative family. At 12, I used to recite Quran. I took part in a Quran recitation competition at the Grand Mosque of Mahdia, and I won the first prize. When I mixed with Muslims, I discovered catastrophes and I was very disappointed. I saw them boasting about an external appearance of Islam, either clothes or utterances…But, in action they were faithless to God’s book…I was thinking about it and I wanted Muslims to wake up from their slumber. They would talk about truth but would never utter it if it harms their own interests, they would pray but would not care about garbage next to the mosque, and they would preach about justice but would not put it into practice. My idea was to provoke Muslims.
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31 Jul 2012 | Uncategorized
The tale of the Twitter abuse of Olympic diver Tom Daley has dominated social media today. Daley, who came a disappointing fourth along with synchronised diving partner Pete Waterfield in their event yesterday, was subjected to abuse, then apologies, then more abuse by a Twitter user. This morning, Dorset police said they had arrested a 17-year-old in a guest house in Weymouth for “malicious communications”.
I genuinely don’t want to get into the arguments on the specifics of this case, as the teenager hasn’t been charged, so I think we need to actually see what transpires before taking a definite position.
The above sentence is 166 characters, and therefore unsuitable for Twitter. But I wonder is the sentiment incompatible too?
It feels incredibly fogeyish to complain about the pace inflicted on us by social media, but I still think it’s a point worth making. The instant nature of the medium seems sometimes to affect how we think: we have to rush to judgment before the story passes us by. We have to offer our approval, show our disdain, and most worryingly, we have to demand action.
The first “Twitter mob” I can remember was the case of Jan Moir’s distasteful Daily Mail article on the circumstances of the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately. Thousands tweeted their disapproval. 25,000 registered complaints with the Press Complaints Commission. The commission refused to censure Moir. Twitter again exploded in outrage.
Two-and-a-half years on, that looks mild. In the past year, we’ve seen examples of people getting arrested for saying stupid, crass, offensive things on social media — Azhar Ahmed insulting soldiers on Facebook, Liam Stacey wishing Fabrice Muamba dead and then descending into racist abuse. In the case of Stacey, hundreds of people reported him to the police, and there was barely contained glee when he was arrested and subsequently jailed.
I worry that this will become the norm: Man says nasty thing on the internet, nice people get upset by nasty thing, nice people demand something be done about nasty thing, police pursue easy conviction (all the evidence is online after all, and there are a million willing witnesses), nasty man gets convicted, and everybody slaps each other on the back for having done their bit. The thrill of active netizenship.
This could end up corrosive: increasingly narrowing the online social sphere so it is eventually only available to the articulate and right-thinking, and fools will suffer real-world punishment.
It doesn’t feel much like free speech. We need to start thinking about better ways of dealing with hurtful, crass speech.
Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index on Censorship
31 Jul 2012 | Mexico
Another attack targeting the Mexican media was carried out on 29 July. The Monterrey-based offices of the regional daily El Norte, a newspaper owned by the Reforma publishing group, were set on fire by armed men late on Sunday. It was the third attack on one of the daily’s offices in the past month. The office attacked Sunday covers the weddings and community events of the elite living in the upper-class enclave of Monterrey’s San Pedro Garza Garcia.
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