Category: Communications and Media & Law and Policy

What the Home Secretary’s Ministerial Direction on Rwanda signifies – and what it does not signify

18th April 2022

The home secretary has issued ‘a ministerial direction’ for her proposal for a ‘migration and economic development partnership’ with Rwanda for the processing of asylum claims.

Such a direction is significant – but it is also important to realise what it does not signify.

The direction by itself does not mean that the proposal is wrong, or will not work, or is unlawful.

What it does mean is that there is sufficient concern within the home office that the most senior official wants Priti Patel to own the decision to go ahead with it.

And this is worth exploring.

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The partnership proposal was published last (Maundy) Thursday – which is odd, given that parliament was not sitting and we are around the time of the start of the central government ‘purdah’ for the local election campaigns.

Also published was a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rwanda.

In general terms, an MoU is a document that is supposed to impress you as as being effective and formal, but is not actually effective nor formal.

A political (and legal) sleight of hand (SoH).

And followers of this blog will enjoy the wording of paragraph 2.2 of the MoU:

“2.2 For the avoidance of doubt, the commitments set out in this Memorandum are made by the United Kingdom to Rwanda and vice versa and do not create or confer any right on any individual, nor shall compliance with this Arrangement be justiciable in any court of law by third-parties or individuals.”

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So that was (Maundy) Thursday.

On (Easter) Saturday, in the late afternoon, two letters were published by the government.

These letters were dated 13 April 2022, that is the Wednesday before the proposal and the MoU were published on the Thursday.

The first letter was from the most senior civil servant at the home office.

He was insisting on a ministerial direction.

Why?

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To answer that question we need to understand government policy on ‘managing public money’.

This policy is not the sort of partisan policy which politicians announce or publish in a manifesto.

It is instead the sort of policy which any government has, regardless of which part is in power.

And within each department the most senior official – in this case the permanent secretary – is the ‘accounting officer’ responsible for ensuring the policy is complied with.

When I was a government lawyer fifteen years ago, it was known as ‘VFM’ – value for money.

Part of the ‘managing public money’ policy provides:

The fine folk at the Institute of Government have provided this excellent explainer on ministerial directions which you should now read.

And this is the government’s own page for such directions.

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Now we go back to the permanent secretary’s letter.

You will see the first three paragraphs set out his understanding of the policy and what it is seeking to achieve – and this is set out in positive terms to which the home secretary herself cannot object.

The fourth paragraph then sets out his role as the accounting officer, and the fifth paragraph sets out the extent to which he sees there is no problem with the Rwanda proposal (emphasis added):

“The Accounting Officer advice that I have received comprises a rigorous assessment of the regularity, propriety, feasibility and value for money of this policy, drawing on legal, policy and operational expertise.  I have satisfied myself that it is regular, proper and feasible for this policy to proceed. We have incorporated learning from Windrush in developing this policy and the plans for its implementation.”

So, according to the official it is generally “regular, proper and feasible” for the proposal to proceed.

But.

There is something about which he as accounting officer is not satisfied, and this is set out out in the next paragraphs (which I have separated out for flow):

“However, this advice highlights the uncertainty surrounding the value for money of the proposal.

“I recognise that, despite the high cost of this policy, there are potentially significant savings to be realised from deterring people entering the UK illegally.

“Value for money of the policy is dependent on it being effective as a deterrent.

“Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.

I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money.

“This does not mean that the MEDP cannot have the appropriate deterrent effect; just that it there is not sufficient evidence for me to conclude that it will.”

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The proposal has a “high cost” – but there is no sufficient evidence that the high cost will be offset by savings from it having any deterrent effect.

The evidence for such an effect is not only uncertain but “highly uncertain”.

He therefore cannot sign off on the policy as accounting officer.

He instead needs to escalate it to the minister to sign off personally.

And so (again broken up for flow):

“Therefore, I will require your written instruction to proceed.

“I consider it is entirely appropriate for you to make a judgement to proceed in the light of the illegal migration challenge the country is facing.

“I will of course follow this direction and ensure the Department continues to support the implementation of the policy to the very best of our abilities.

“Should you issue a direction, I am required to copy all relevant papers to the Comptroller and Auditor General (who will inform the Public Accounts Committee) and the Treasury Officer of Accounts.

“I anticipate publishing our exchange of direction letters as early as practicable.”

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So this is not any usurpation of ministerial responsibility and democratic control, but a reinforcement of the priority of minister over officials.

The minister will get their way – but they have to take the decision themselves.

And so the home secretary replied, giving the direction.

Her letter is also worth looking at – though this time for what it does not say.

Her letter does not engage with the value for money points but sidesteps them (again broken for flow):

“While we understand it is not possible for HMG to accurately model the deterrent effect from day one, together with Rwanda, we are confident this policy is our best chance at producing that effect.

“It is only by introducing new incentives and effective deterrents into the system, as our international partners like Denmark, Greece, and Australia have succeeded in doing, that we can take on the criminal gangs facilitating illegal entry and break their lethal business model.

“I recognise your assessment on the immediate value for money aspect of this proposal.

“However, I note that without action, costs will continue to rise, lives will continue to be lost, and that together we have introduced safeguards into our agreement to protect taxpayer funding.

“And while accepting the constraints of the accounting officer framework set out by HM Treasury, I also think there are credible invest-to-save arguments in the long term.

[…]

…I also believe there is an imperative to act now to mitigate the impact on staff wellbeing as well as departmental operational and financial pressures in the longer term.

“It would therefore be imprudent in my view, as Home Secretary, to allow the absence of quantifiable and dynamic modelling – which is inevitable when developing a response to global crises influenced by so many geopolitical factors such as climate change, war and conflict –– to delay delivery of a policy that we believe will reduce illegal migration, save lives, and ultimately break the business model of the smuggling gangs.

“I am therefore formally directing you as Accounting Officer to take forward this scheme with immediate effect, managing the identified risks as best you can.”

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For the home secretary, the lack of sufficient evidence of any deterrent effect does not matter.

She believes the Rwanda proposal will work, and so it shall be taken forward.

She is confident that in the longer-term there will be value for money, and – in any case – modelling is not easy for this sort of things.

Her decision; her call.

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Of course, one should be wary of taking documents such as these two exchanged letters seriously at face value.

Such exchanges can be choreographed and it sometimes (though not here one suspects, given the disjoined nature of the reply) the same official will draft both letters – ‘sign here minister’.

It could be that the request for a direction here is a manifestation of deeper unease within the home office at this proposal – and that such a request, framed in VFM terms, was the only way of signalling publicly this unease.

The bureaucratic equivalent of the blinking hostage.

On the other hand, the home office is certainly capable of nasty and expensive policies.

And the permanent secretary in his fifth paragraph goes out of his way to say it is “regular, proper and feasible for this policy to proceed”.

Who knows?

Perhaps the permanent secretary knew the value for money objection could not be gainsaid and that it would not look like he was criticising the merits of the proposal.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

We do not know the realities behind the scenes.

The request for a direction is significant – but what it signifies generally is not clear.

But what we do know from this exchange of letters is that on the very eve of the publication of the proposal, the most senior official in the home office said that there was not sufficient evidence that the proposal would have any deterrent effect, and in response to this the home secretary could not provide any such evidence but wanted to go ahead with the policy anyway.

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Thank you for reading – and please support this blog.

These free-to-read law and policy posts every week day take time and opportunity cost to put together, as do the comments to moderate.

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***

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

For more on this blog’s Comments Policy see this page.

Censorship vs the Babble – both work for authoritarians

7th April 2022

This post is just to set a quick thought (as I am recovering from illness).

It is to contrast and compare two things, which seem to be leading to a common end.

The first is Putin-style censorship – the sort which means Russians generally do not appear to have true information available about the invasion of Ukraine.

This suits the authoritarian nationalist populist Putin.

The second is the anything-goes babble of social media and 24-hour online news and comments, where few are actually censored.

The effect of this babble appears to be that liberal and progressive voices are drowned out, with hyper-partisan shouts of fake news and ‘balance’.

This suits the authoritarian nationalist populist politicians in many other countries.

So we have two modes of media which seem very different, but which have the same authoritarian effect of undermining and restricting critical voices.

Anyway, just a quick thought. What do you think?

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

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April Fools Day in an age of Fake News and Hyper-Partisanship

1st April 2022

I tweeted something knowingly untrue this morning.

I said that, contrary to my long-standing absolute and principled objection to the gods-awful and professionally divisive QC system, I had the honour of accepting appointment as a QC.

Given the aside in yesterday’s in yesterday’s post, I thought it may amuse somebody out there.

I think it amused one or two.

But it convinced many more.

And so I got hearty sincere congratulations for something I would never do, and indeed I would rather boil my head than do.

Many readily believed I would brazenly be such a hypocrite.

A prominent Tory politician did something similar – and got this earnest tut-tut response from a Guardian journalist:

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And then it struck me.

What a dated thing to do.

April Fool’s Day is now itself as dated as the black-and-white Panorama film footage of spaghetti-bearing trees.

April Fool’s Day in part presupposes a core trusted media, where one can be playfully topsy-turvey with the actualité.

A twelfth night of inversions – but with the media.

An annual exception to the mundane lot of straight(-ish) reportage.

Yet with social media, fake news and hyper-partisanship, such inversions are a commonplace.

The norm even, and not an exception.

Perhaps we can instead have a day each year where everyone – including all on social media – has to be strict with the truth.

And if we did, one suspects that would not last past midday either.

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

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Blue ticks on Twitter – the problems with regulation and self-regulation

31st March 2022

Some people who care about these things are upset when they don’t have a ‘blue tick’ verification mark on their Twitter account.

Some people who care even more about these things are upset when, for whatever reason, their cherished ‘blue tick’ is removed.

I happen to have a high-follower Twitter account – where I tweet about things where credibility and indeed verification can be important – but I do not have and do not want a ‘blue tick’.

(Indeed, I have refused one.)

Why?

Isn’t credibility and verification important?

Well.

There are different ways of having credibility and different methods of verification.

I tweet (and blog) about the law, but I rarely say expressly that I am legally qualified.

This is because I want the content of my commentary itself to have credibility, rather than to appeal to authority.

If I have to resort to ‘actually I am a solicitor’ then something has gone astray in my commentary.

Either I get the law right or I get the law wrong – and in neither case should having ‘lawyer’ or ‘solicitor’ in my bio make any difference, still less a ‘blue tick’ against my name.

(I have a similar problem with lawyers who insist on having ‘QC’ on their social media account, as if their tweets are court pleadings, or formal advices or opinions.)

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Indeed, in my opinion the ‘blue tick’ can confer a false sense of authority.

A view can be taken that a thing must be true or fair – just because it has been tweeted (or re-tweeted) by a ‘blue tick’ account.

Yet nasty and vile tweets can be tweeted by ‘blue tick’ accounts, as well as factually false information.

This is because a ‘blue tick’ is not actually a badge of credibility or verification, but – too often – a substitute for one.

Such an objection, however, does not mean that anything goes.

Instead, it means people should be critical with what they engage on social media.

Ask questions: who follows an account, who does an account frequently engage with, what are the replies and quote-tweets of a tweet, does the tweeter link to sources – and so on.

Forming your own view, in other words – rather than nodding-along with a false badge of authority.

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I know the easy response to this will be for some to say that I misunderstand social media – and that people do not want to think for themselves.

But – we are still in the early history of social media and internet-based global communications, and we should not mistake what social media is like now with what it may become.

We could all shout at strangers in the street or on the bus – but almost nobody does, even though the opportunity is there.

And similarly people may become more measured and sensible in how they interact on social media.

The best regulation, in my view, comes from – where possible – empowering people to make informed decisions.

And the arbitrary and non-transparent system of ‘blue ticks’ – which confer respectability on some unpleasant and/or false tweets – is the means of encouraging people to not make informed decisions, rather than making them.

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This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

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A balancing exercise in action – Chris Mullin defeats a disclosure request in respect of the Birmingham pub bombings

23rd March 2022

I was born and brought up in the Birmingham of the 1970s, and like many others I had family and family friends who could well have been killed in the Birmingham pub bombings.

There is a powerful public interest in that crime being properly investigated and those guilty being convicted.

Six innocent men were convicted for the bombings, and their prosecution and punishments was an appalling miscarriage of justice, perhaps one of the worst miscarriages of justice in English legal history.

There was a powerful public interest in that miscarriage of justice being exposed and corrected.

And the journalist (and later politician) Chris Mullin was the one who did most to expose and correct that miscarriage of justice.

What happens when two powerful public interests such as the above collide?

That was the issue before the recorder of London at the Old Bailey.

On one hand, those police officers investigating the bombings want access to materials held by Mullin.

You can see why the police would want this – especially if it would contain direct evidence that would aid a successful prosecution.

But that does not necessarily mean the police should get it.

The reason is that the material which Mullin holds was given to him on the basis of confidentiality, so that he could expose the miscarriage of justice.

Without that assurance to his source, Mullin would not have been given that information, and without that information the miscarriage of justice would not have been exposed.

And so the public interest in exposing that miscarriage of justice would have been defeated.

In a detailed and fascinating judgment, the judge shows how the competing – indeed contrasting – public interests in this case should be balanced.

And in a compelling conclusion the judge holds that in this case there should not be an order for disclosure of the material.

It is unfortunate that this means that any prosecution of those guilty of the bombings will not be assisted by this material – but such a prosecution should not be at the cost of undermining the public interest in exposing a miscarriage of justice.

Not only is the judgment compelling, it also is another recent example of a judge taking Article 10 of the ECHR and the right to free expression seriously.

It is a good judgment in a difficult case, and it is recommended reading for anyone interested in practical law and policy.

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***

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

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What is SLAPP?

22nd March 2022

Sometimes I give blogposts the wrong titles.

Yesterday, the post here had the title: Is there a SLAPP problem in the English courts?

This is a good – and urgent – question.

The problem was that the post did not answer the question, and instead it set out some preliminary views about SLAPP – that is an acronym for ‘strategic litigation against public participation’.

What I should have done before setting out these preliminary views was to explain SLAPP – and I am sorry I did not do so.

Some people even told me on Twitter that they had to google ‘SLAPP’ so as to understand my post.

This post seeks to remedy the deficiency of yesterday’s post.

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SLAPP is a term to describe the misuse of the litigation process for the purpose of minimising or eliminating public and media scrutiny.

It is an American term and it appears to date from 1996.

There have been, in turn, various anti-SLAPP laws in America.

The reason why SLAPP is now seen as an issue here is a spate of illiberal legal claims brought (or threatened) in the High Court in London which appear to have the ulterior motive of minimising or eliminating public and media scrutiny – in particular scrutiny of various oligarchs and foreign corporations.

The United Kingdom government has just announced that it is considering introducing anti-SLAPP laws here and it has put out the a call for evidence on SLAPP.

The government describes SLAPP as follows:

“The term SLAPPs is commonly used to describe activity that aims to discourage public criticism through an improper use of the legal system. SLAPPs have two key features:

• They target acts of public participation. Public participation can include academic research, journalism and whistle-blowing activity concerned with matters of societal importance, such as illicit finance or corruption.

• They aim to prevent information in the public interest from being published. This can be by threatening or bringing proceedings which often feature excessive claims.”

Another word for this phenomenon is the splendid portmanteau ‘lawfare’.

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Now that I have set out a defintion of the term, do have another look at yesterday’s post – which I have now re-titled.

You will see that I aver that although SLAPP is a pejorative and contested term, it is also a useful term as long as you bear its limitations in mind.

In further posts on this blog I am going to look at some recent cases that have been described as SLAPP cases so as to answer the following questions:

1. Is there really a SLAPP problem in the English courts?

2. If so, what is the nature of that problem?

3. And if it is a problem, is it a problem capable of being solved?

I think it is important to ground any consideration of reform in an understanding of actual examples, else one can end up with a mismatch between proposals and problems.

For such a mismatch is what happened, in my view, with the campaign which led to the Defamation Act 2013, where the eventual legislation that was passed would have done little or nothing in respect of the various poster-cases on which the campaign relied.

(With my old Jack of Kent blog I was part of the early part of that campaign for libel reform, though I had and have concerns about the law that was finally enacted.)

Whether there is an actual SLAPP problem and, if so, whether it can be solved is a key issue for our legal system and how that system impacts on public debate.

I would like this blog – with its posts and excellent commenters – to be part of informing the debate on that issue.

I am sorry my post yesterday was running before it was walking – and I hope this further post has put that right.

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Thank you for reading – these free-to-read law and policy posts take time and opportunity cost to put together, as do the comments to moderate.

So for more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.

***

Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

For more on this blog’s Comments Policy see this page.

SLAPP and English courts – some preliminary issues

21st March 2022

SLAPP – strategic litigation against public participation – is a new-ish name for an age-old problem.

Here is L. Ron Hubbard in 1955 advocating law suits against those who were using Scientology materials without authorisation:

“The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly”

(The Scientologist: a Manual on the Dissemination of Material, page 157)

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SLAPP is, of course, a pejorative term (as this blog recently averred) – but, for want of a better term, is the best name we have got for a certain thing.

The problem with SLAPP being a pejorative term is that, just as one person’s terrorist can be another person’s freedom fighter, one person’s SLAPP case is another person’s legitimate attempt to defend their reputation and/or privacy rights.

Few if any claimants will say expressly that their case is a SLAPP case – not many are as brazen as L. Ron Hubbard.

And it is possible that what one side considers to be a SLAPP case will genuinely not be considered to be a SLAPP case by the other side.

That said, SLAPP as a term has two useful qualities.

First, it is not limited to any one area of law – for example defamation – and so it implicitly recognises that various areas of law can be (mis)used – not only defamation but also misuse of private information, data protection, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, and so on.

Second, it indicates that certain decisions are being made strategically – or at least, tactically (though TLASS is a less handy acronym) – about the purpose to which law is being used.

Another problem, however, with SLAPP as a term is that its American origins may mislead people into thinking all anti-SLAPP legislation is the same.

In fact, much of what constitutes anti-SLAPP reform in the United States is already part of English law, including the ready availability of costs sanctions and early opportunities for meritless cases to be struck out.

There is no single anti-SLAPP reform that fits all jurisdictions.

So as long as the strengths and weaknesses of SLAPP as a term are borne in mind, it is the best description we have got of a certain thing.

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But – what is that thing?

Well.

One thing it usually is not about is the law or procedural rules being broken by lawyers or their clients.

In almost all SLAPP cases, the lawyers are using the laws and court procedures available to them: the issue is the ulterior purpose to which those laws and court procedures is being put.

This is why, in my view, attempts to ‘name and shame’ the lawyers involved are misconceived.

(Though, for completeness, I know and deal with many of those who are involved.)

The lawyers that have so far been publicly named are but a sub-set of the lawyers competent and willing to take on such claims.

And – frankly – you do not need parliamentary privilege to ‘name and shame’ the lawyers: all you need to do is look at the case reports to see who they are, and at their own websites to see how they promote their practices.

I happen to be a media defence lawyer (among other things) – acting for journalists, campaigners, and politicians – and I chose not to act for claimants in these sort of cases, but that is entirely a personal choice.

In my experience of seeing dozens of threatening letters (of varying quality), almost all the threats are within the scope of law and practice as it stands.

And if a threatening letter did not come from one firm, I can imagine pretty much the same sort of letter coming from a dozen other firms.

The problem is with the law and practice, and so – if you sincerely want to solve the problem – that is where the solution will be.

Although therapeutic, ‘naming and shaming’ the lawyers involved is a cul-de-sac.

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Another thing to note is that, in England, SLAPP is not just about costs – even if the amounts involved can be eye-watering.

Yes, London claimant lawyers are expensive – too expensive.

But: American lawyers are expensive too, sometimes even more expensive than English lawyers.

Media lawyers in other jurisdictions are also high-charging and highly paid.

Yet, it is in England that certain cases are brought – and threatened.

This is because the problem with SLAPP cases in London is not just the costs, but how those costs can be easily weaponised as part of of a legal threat.

London litigation is often not a game of thrones, but a game of costs.

The dynamics of many cases will come down to costs, and how costs consequences can be inflicted and deflected.

And how this happens comes down to the structure and practice of the relevant law.

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But perhaps the biggest difficulty about discussing SLAPP in England is that the discussion can sometimes seem abstract.

SLAPP is a bad thing, and nice people are against bad things.

Let’s boo at SLAPP!

But the challenge is to make any SLAPP reform work practically – to make a difference in actual cases.

There are a number of ways law and practice can be misused, and so any reform needs to be set against actual cases to see if the reform would make any practical difference.

One thing I recall from the campaign which led to the Defamation Act 2013 is that the key case for mobilising support – the misconceived and illiberal claim brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer Simon Singh – turned out not to be directly relevant to the legislation that was then passed.

Little in that Act would stop another such case being brought again – and indeed it was the court’s own decision in that case, and not any legislation, that has stopped further similar claims.

There can be a practical disconnect between cases that attract public concerns and the reforms then promoted for dealing with such concerns.

That is why this blog is going to look over the next few days at a ‘data-set’ of SLAPP cases, to see what the actual problems are and to see what, if any, solutions can be put in place to stop similar cases being threatened and brought.

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In the meantime, I would suggest anyone interested in SLAPP, and what practical reforms can be implemented to prevent such cases, look at the following:-

– the transcript of the oral evidence at the foreign affairs select committee on the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (or watch it here);

– the excellent and comprehensive work by Susan Coughtrie and the Foreign Policy Centre on SLAPPS – including this policy paper;

– this House of Commons library briefing on SLAPP; and

– the UK government’s recent call for evidence on SLAPP.

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Thank you for reading – these free-to-read law and policy posts take time and opportunity cost to put together, as do the comments to moderate.

So for more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.

***

Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.

For more on this blog’s Comments Policy see this page.

One difficulty with SLAPP

17th March 2022

I am currently writing something for publication elsewhere about SLAPP – that is strategic litigation against public participation.

There is, however, one point about SLAPP that I thought was worth making by itself in a brief post.

The point is that SLAPP is a loaded, pejorative term.

It is not an agreed term.

It is instead a term a critic uses to describe certain litigation that the critic does not like.

Very few people – if any – would say they are pro-SLAPP.

And this is a problem in respect of reforming law and procedure so as to make such illiberal and misconceived law suits more difficult to threaten and to bring.

For if there is no objective definition of what one is trying to avoid, there can be no easy set of changes for avoiding it.

And many of the features of American anti-SLAPP legislation are already part of English law and procedure.

So, of course SLAPP is wrong: for what sensible person would not be against strategic litigation against public participation?

But being against a thing framed in loaded terms is not the same as knowing what to do to counter that thing.

More thought is needed than just to say SLAPP is wrong.

We should not be, well, slapdash about SLAPP.

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My Comments Policy now has its own page.

About comments on blogs and ‘below the line’

16th March 2022

Thanks to many of you, this blog has a very high standard of comments.

The only credit I can take for this is that I pre-moderate the comments – and I wish other sites pre-moderated their comments too.

In the olden days, newspapers used to take pride in their ‘letters to the editor’ page – and so not any old letter sent in would get published.

Some newspapers even had individuals responsible for editing these pages – and one or two may still do.

But then – the internet came along.

Comments ‘below the line’ became, for want of a better word, content – and free content at that.

It even became more legally safe not to pre-moderate the comments, as you could say that you were unaware of what was said until you had a complaint.

And this led to many sites where the comments ‘below the line’ are unpleasant or not worth the effort in reading.

Of course: if you really want to say something not nice, or useless, there is nothing stopping you – there are many places on the internet for you to go, like Twitter.

But freedom of expression does not confer the absolute right to impose that expression on another person’s website.

Yes, pre-moderation takes time and effort to do – but it is worth that time and effort.

Indeed, moderating and curating comments ‘below the line’ is itself an exercise in free expression – of how I want this blog to present itself to the world.

And there is the internet truth that good comments encourage other good comments, and bad comments encourage other bad comments.

This truth, over time, becomes perpetuating – so that the sort of people who want to leave poor quality comments tend not to even bother with this site.

A very high standard of comments below a blogpost does not happen by accident.

But.

I would be kidding myself that this was primarily because of my policy – so again thank you for leaving – and reading – the high quality comments on this site.

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My Comments Policy now has its own page.

 

The fake Twitter account of “Marina Ovsyannikova” – and how to spot such fakes

15th March 2022

Being an experienced Twitter user is like being what comedian Jasper Carrott once said of Ed Doolan: “world-famous in Birmingham”.

You have a great deal of knowledge about a relatively small thing, but one advantage that experience and knowledge give you is an ability to spot fakes.

And earlier today many mainstream media journalists fell for a fake account in the name of Marina Ovsyannikova, the Moscow television editor who bravely interrupted a live broadcast to protest against the invasion of Ukraine.

This what she did:

And this is a video that was circulated afterwards:

She was then – unfortunately but unsurprisingly – detained.

And then – this morning – it seemed somehow she was tweeting.

 

As you can see, the tweets were heavily RTd and favourited.

And the tweets were RTd and favourited by many mainstream media figures.

One even told us, earnestly, that we should take such tweets “at face value”.

But.

The account was fake.

But not only was it fake, it was self-evidently fake.

From the profile alone, it could be seen it was a recent account.

The bio says ‘former editor’ – as if she would have been in a position to change the bio.

The profile pic was a screen-grab from the video circulated after the incident – and one would think there would be better pics available to an authentic account.

The tweets were in English – from a Russian-Ukrainian who was warning Russians about Russian war policy.

Twitter, of course, is blocked in Russia – and although she could be using a VPN, there would be no point in her doing that if she was tweeting under her own name.

And she was being detained anyway.

Scrolling down to before the incident you would see (1) anti-war tweets (2) tagged with the ‘#Anonymous’ tag – both of which would be implausible for someone in her role planning to make a surprise intervention in live news:

All this took a few seconds to check and assess.

(Others clicked into the earlier tweets and could ascertain they were with a different Twitter handle – but I was already satisfied they were fake without this further due diligence.)

Some might say that – notwithstanding all these indications to the contrary – the account could still be authentic – or the tweets were being tweeted on her behalf.

Perhaps – but even taking this at its highest, the numerous indications were such that the account should not have been taken at ‘face value’.

It probably was a frolic of an opportunist rather than anything more sinister, and when mainstream media people RTd the account, others (understandably) thought the account was legitimate.

(And the account has now been suspended. was temporarily deleted – but it has returned with older tweets removed.)

But one should always be critical – some things are true, some things are false, and the job is to work out the difference.

And this critical faculty is maybe required nowadays more than before.

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