The Guardian set the pulses of conspiracy theorists and truth-seekers racing last night with an article headlined: “Guardian gagged from reporting parliament”.
In the piece the paper claimed:
"The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds … Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week.
The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented …from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret…. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations."
Which in truth, while it appears to say little, was more than enough to make the issue appear all the more sinister and set others in search of the missing words. The Guardian’s alarming claim effectively lit the blue touchpaper and mobilised the blogosphere and Twitterverse where the nose for a whiff of scandal and the sense of justice, or possibly just mischief, is scarcely suppressed.
Among the commonest links springing up from this revelation on Twitter was this from Wikileaks.
Now today the Spectator has stepped forward, stating in its own coverage of the issue:
“It's hard to recall, even in the long history of appalling gagging orders, a more disgraceful injunction than this."
This has the potential to become the starkest example yet of how the rules and anachronisms of old media are at best counter-intuitive, at worst incendiary in the burgeoning world of social media. Though the Guardian, to its great credit, knew exactly what it was doing, I'm sure.
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