Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 21st October 2009

We should think most carefully before calling for censorship in any quarter

The gist of her column was that the sudden and perplexing death of the 32-year-old Mr Gately in Majorca (after coming back from a night’s clubbing with his partner and another man they’d met) has been treated too cosily by an adoring news and showbiz media. ‘Under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.’ Moir appears to challenge — or at least take imaginatively forward — a coroner’s verdict of death by ‘natural causes’. The death ‘strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships...’.

It should at once be said that everyone who knew Gately says he was a nice person, not druggy and not a big drinker. Moir brings to the media table no new theory about his death; and there is no reason to think his civil partnership was unhappy. The column was tendentious. It was intended to be.

So who can now be found to argue for free expression in this case? Even Moir’s own newspaper appears (at the time of writing) to have judged discretion the better part of valour, and more or less left her to the wolves. So, faute de mieux, it has fallen to me.

I have not the least hesitation in resisting calls for the effective censorship of such journalism. And to date (within a couple of days of the row breaking) I’ve done so on Sam Smith’s Sunday programme on Ireland’s Today FM; for half an hour (being shouted at by callers) on Radio 5 Live; on BBC Radio Northern Ireland; and for ITN, who even sent a broadcasting van to my remote house in the Derbyshire Peak District. Bloggers have been in touch too, and I’ve had to turn down BBC Radio Wales, and the opportunity (offered twice) to make a ‘package’ for The One Show. By the time you read this there will have been many more outlets for my perfectly unexceptionable defence of vigorous commentary after the mysterious death of a young celebrity.

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emjaydub

October 22nd, 2009 9:57pm Report this comment

This isn't about taking offence. Most of us as individuals can turn the other cheek to Ms Moir. What I question is the right of anyone (not only Ms Moir but her editors) to go uncriticised for spouting homophobic views in a world where - by way of a recent example of an unisolated incident - a man was kicked to death in Trafalgar Square by teenagers shouting homophobic abuse. Jan Moir and her editors bear a particular responsibility because the Daily Mail is a high circulation newspaper which has a certain influence on the general public.

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