In October, there was outrage when UK libel lawyers Carter-Ruck prevented a newspaper from repeating questions asked in Parliament. The issue was regarding the lawyers’ client, Trafigura, which several media outlets including The Guardian and the BBC reported had dumped toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, leading to many deaths and other health issues.

Trafigura took a very aggressive stance, using the UK’s outdated libel laws to gag the media, and questions in Parliament. When the Guardian reported that it had been served with a “super-injunction” that didn’t allow it to name Trafigura, or Carter-Ruck, *or* the fact that they had taken out an injunction on them, the Internet took up the case and plastered the details everywhere. Twitter in particular came into play.

That moment was hailed as a victory of the Internet over efforts to clamp down on free speech and comment, but Trafigura and Carter-Ruck simply bided their time and have again launched into an aggressive clampdown, this time removing an article from the BBC website that covered its Newsnight investigation.

And so, people on the Internet are again picking up the baton and posting the information online, including a video of the Newsnight programme that covered Trafigura and its toxic waste dumping scandal. It is posted above. Presumably, Trafigura will now direct Carter-Ruck to take action against YouTube, at which point I am sure this will take another turn around the roundabout. Hopefully until Trafigura’s learns a valuable lesson.

I would encourage any bloggers or twitterers out there to disseminate this information.

The Internet and email are wonderful things most of the time. But the dreadful simplicity of this form of communication has some downsides – most significantly in that it allows people’s idiotic thoughts to be transmitted beyond themselves.

Everyone has idiotic thoughts. Some people have many more than others. And mostly you control them; keep them safe until you’ve checked them internally. Some people however have so many stupid ideas in their head that they can’t help but leak out. These are the people that most love the Internet.

If you ever had to deal with a wider community online (I have as an author, a journalist, a news editor, a blogger and now a general manager of public participation), you get your fill of people talking utter nonsense or – better – misreading or misrepresenting what you said and then attacking you for what they believe they have read.

For all of you fellow sufferers out there – I know you are many – here is a helpful release, courtesy of my good friend Rachel. It is called spEak You’re bRanes and you can find it at:

http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

It comprises of choice comments from readers of the BBC website, and it is terrific. The editor delights in surreal attacks on the wonderful collection of idiots, bigots, liars, fools and general nutjobs that have found the Internet and aren’t afraid to use it.

Just one example, in a post asking why people are willing to torture, a loon claiming to come from Rockall (he doesn’t, it’s uninhabited as I can personally testify) has this to say:

They need not have bothered.
Just ask how many people laugh at situations you see on You’ve Been Framed.
We all have an inbuilt trigger that laughs at someone falling over.

Mr James T Haddock, Rockall Island (Scotland), United Kingdom

Our editor has this offer in response:
I don’t know where to start with this one. By pointing out the subtle differences between complicity in atrocities and shitty home-staged slapstick? By gently breaking it to him that the laughter he hears on You’ve Been Framed isn’t really people? Or do I just dive straight in with the electrified nipple-clamps and laugh my arse off?

There’s much more. It will help you laugh it off.

The Internet’s not what it used to be. I heard this morning that some Italian magazine called Chi had printed a picture of Princess Diana, dead, sat in the car that killed her in Paris way back in 1997. After dinner, I thought I’d find it, and, incredibly, it’s taken me an hour.

Of course, the British tabloids have leapt on the picture, bellowing with outrage. This is just shameless profiteering. Every editor knows that Diana stories sell papers – Richard Desmond has turned over an entire newspaper, The Daily Express, to this peculiar business model, running endless and pointless front-page headlines over Diana.

But what is really ridiculous is that the picture is the tamest photo you could ever expect to see of a car crash. I find it amazing it hasn’t been published before. But then Diana’s death caused a national slippage of normal brain activity in the UK, and the flashbacks for the nation are still reoccurring.

What is strange is that I was discussing the peculiar tendency of the Western press to steer clear of graphic pictures only a few hours ago. Al-Jazeera showed some footage earlier today of a bombed-out building in Lebanon where a man in dreadful pain and shock held out a dead young girl in front of the camera that had just been pulled out of the rubble. He was demonstrating that this was not, as Israel claimed soon after, only an ammuniations dump, it was a family house. My friend who saw the footage told me that the girl was the same age as his daughter and he suddenly found himself crying.

But if you watch the images from the BBC, or Sky, or CNN, all you will see is a long-shot showing Beirut airport being bombed, or possibly a long-shot of a collasped building. Are they right to protect us from shocking images? Clearly they think so. But at the same time, isn’t that a bit of a cop-out, and a dangerous cop-out at that. We are not being told the reality, shown the reality. Death is shocking so why does our media pretend it isn’t?

Vietnam and beyond

Ever since Vietnam, the US has had major problems with showing death – to the extent that even coffins of returning soldiers from Iraq were carefully controlled. And I can’t remember the last time I saw a pic in the UK press that made me stop and think. I should ask some photographer friends what the history is behind the self-censorship of the realities of life.

But this standpoint is entirely hypocritical. See how we are able to deal with close-up pictures of Saddam Hussein’s sons – clearly dead and shot to pieces – all over the media, but not even the slightest hint of close-up violence otherwise. But those pictures were okay because they were *bad people*. It is incoherent.

And how come we can’t handle a few real pictures where we pay to go see incredibly graphic depictions of violence at the cinema? American films in particular are *incredibly* violent. There’s some crap cop show on the TV as I type this and two people have just come across a dead man by a bin, shot, dead, with blood all over his chest. I didn’t even blink. There is a very worrying double-standard at work here.

Self-censorship

But what is even more worrying than that is a strange phenomenon of people self-censoring themselves on the Net. The Diana pic is not at all shocking and yet while several newspapers have run with the picture in their printed versions, no one has put it online. And people haven’t scanned the pic in and posted it up on the Net either. Not yet anyway.
There is a palpable fear out there in cyberspace about publishing this picture. Why? Has the very openness of the Net caused people to be overly censorious? Are people worried about hosting the pic, being linked to by everyone else (who don’t want to host it), and then being hounded by thousands of Netizens in a fake frenzy? Well, yes.

The Diana pic is apparently taken from a new book that covers the investigation into her death and includes some autopsy details. Fine. There is a book on her death and it includes some details.

Boycott

But people’s response has to be call for newsagents to boycott this Chi magazine – which no one had ever heard of before – and ban the book, before anyone has ever even seen it. This is madness. Why has society become some hopelessly intolerant? Why is our first response to censor, to condemn and to ban? And where have the sensible majority gone?

Is it just because it’s Diana? Well, yes, partly. But at the same time, look at what we see of Iraq and Afghanistan – wars in which our citizens are being killed. Nothing. And what about Israel and Gaza and Lebanon? Isn’t a bit of old-fashioned horror at the reality of death exactly what we need, rather than white-clean, wipe-clean fantasies?

You’re not going to get any of that horror from the Diana pic though. Have a look at it. I am sticking it below. If you are shocked by this photo, it is because you are determined to be shocked. What if I told you it wasn’t Diana – are you still shocked? What exactly is there in the photo to be shocked about?

Censorship and mob outrage are the enemies of logic and the tools of propagandists and crooks.

Update: A report from John Stevens, out on 14 December 2006, summarized findings from a three-year investigation directly into the question over whether Diana’s death was a conspiracy. He concluded firmly that Diana’s death was no more than a “tragic accident”. You can download the short version of the report, or the longer version (800+ pages) from this site by following the links.