By Tim Redmond
One of the many wonderful things about the modern world of media is that government and legal gag orders really don’t work anymore.
The Guardian of London faced a stunning order this week not to publish information on a question asked in Parliament. But the minute the paper announced it had been gagged, the social media networks and the bloggers came alive with the story, and before long, the question that the Guardian couldn’t report on was published in its entirely (among other places, in the comments on my previous blog item on this).
Turns out this was all about a London law firm, Carter Ruck, trying to block publication of information about alleged toxic waste dumping in Ivory Coast. (You can read the report that started all the fuss here.)
Here’s the result,. according to the Guardian:
The result of Carter-Ruck’s intransigence was an avalanche of online publication, as well as the reproduction of Farrelly’s parliamentary questions in the magazine Private Eye, which hit the London streets at lunchtime today. Bloggers who posted Farrelly’s questions in full included the political website Guido Fawkes and the Spectator magazine website.
Large numbers of messages were posted on Twitter, to the extent that “Trafigura” and “Carter-Ruck” became the most viewed keywords in London throughout the morning.
So now the whole thing is a major public issue, probably bringing more negative publicity for Carter Ruck and Trafigura than would ever have happened if the firm had never sought the gag order. Go team.