The Times and Harry The Owl

No comments on The Times article yet. It needs some of the excellent analysis here being copied over.

xxyzz

Surely imprints can't go completely against what the public face of Hachette is saying publicly?

It may be different with non-fiction but the Hachette imprint I work with/for does not have to be green-lit from above. Editors have full authority, and the last word as to what is published. I suppose in retrospect, post-publications, problems could arise but that would be after the fact, as in this case (I presume).

I made similar points about the absurdity of trigger warnings when studying law on the other thread, sickofthis, so totally agree with your analysis. Everyone remembers R vs Brown! I was at uni when the changes around marital rape were coming through in case law, and that was tough going. Likewise with the case law around Ahluwalia/Thornton et al. All very harrowing stuff, and the vitriol thrown at feminists at the time was horrible. The concept that young people studying now need to have this sanitised (re written?) so they can cope with it is really troubling.

Agree with much of what @SickOfThisVirus said. I've studied Brown, and a raft of rape cases, and cases to do with sexually transmitted infections. None of them exactly make for pleasant reading but that's the law. I would imagine the full goings on of murder cases are harrowing as well.

What I wouldn't imagine is any of these cases being given over to lobby groups for input on how to change the words of the judge. In a textbook. For those about to learn the judgments of judges.

And yet...it seems to have happened.

Trying to hide facts of a court case.

Trying to hide the comments of a judge.

Trying to hide the full truth of the ruling.

Seeking to warn students - who may be our future lawyers and judges - that this factual information is triggering and not safe to read? Potentially undermining
our justice system by insinuating it's not neutral.

I'm just wondering what else has been skewed and given the treatment behind closed doors.

Surely imprints can't go completely against what the public face of Hachette is saying publicly?

@hellandhairnets

Glad that you think this probably was a decision made by someone lower down in Hachette, without approval from the top.

Though how whoever made the decision could think this was acceptable for anyone working for Hachette to do at that point, when the headlines were full of Hachette's public support for JK Rowling and the principle of free speech, I cannot imagine.

^^ seek approval for what they do or don't publish, I should have said above.

I suspect this will be zealous overreach on the part of one particular editor/publishing team that has been allowed to get completely out of control.

This. Hachette imprints usually operate entirely independently and don't have to seek approval from the top for what they do or don't do.

Trigger warnings on legal rulings??
What other legal rulings might attract trigger warnings one wonders?

I'm a lawyer and had to study a module on crime to get my qualification. This included a week on sexual offences, what did and did not count as rape, lots of detailed discussions of cases with rape/sexual assault etc. I imagine given the number of young women studying the course, some of them will have been victims of rape/sexual assault and might have found it uncomfortable/upsetting. This is probably the most justified place to put a trigger warning, but we had to read the relevant chapters ahead of the lecture and it was immediately obvious what the subject was so it probably wouldn't be needed. I suppose if anyone did find that material difficult they could have not gone to lessons that week and chose to avoid any questions on the subject in the final exam (IIRC we had a choice of 5 exam questions from which we needed to choose 3). Where would you stop with the trigger warnings? There might also have been people in the class who have been physically assaulted, had friends or relatives who were murdered etc.

But the judgment in question here seems to me to be a case that will annoy TRAs and their woke allies rather than trigger PTSD flashbacks. There are a lot of judgments that will irritate some readers. A Christian student on the course got very angry about the Ladele case (where a Christian registrar was not permitted to refuse to perform homosexual weddings) and I imagine some students who agreed with the judgment in that case will have been equally irritated with the Christian student's views - I know I thought she was being unreasonable but it turned into an interesting debate. Law is not a place for #nodebate. Law is #non-stopdebateabouteverything.

We also studied R v Brown (concerning gay men involved in S&M and whether they could consent to physical assault) and the teachers didn't censor it - but they did explain that it was possible that the judgment was in part motivated by homophobia as it was inconsistent with other judgments concerning heterosexual couples. But the point is we still learned what the judges said and formed our own conclusions. The censorship that is happening here is really shocking.

What else has been censored by Mermaids? Who else do they give "feedback" to? Looking forward to the expose by the BBC which triggered their distrust.

I'm picturing a future where physics textbooks are given to Flat Earthers to 'correct' and evolution edited by the Jesuits. I'm pretty sure they find standard works offensive.

Plenty of A level students are critical of gender identity theory also. The idea that all young people uncritically accept it is simply wrong

Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. The main thrust was that Hodder’s view is now so out of step with the real world that they believe they’re doing right, when actually they’re terrifyingly brainwashed.

Also, given that the BBC (transactivism central) have removed Mermaids from their site, but have not made public the (presumed) scandal that caused them to do so is equally concerning. If there’s a problem with Mermaids’ advice, then it needs to be acknowledged so that other companies stop using them as a supposed “safe reference”.

In its justification for the intervention, a Hodder editor told him: “The claimant’s [Harry Miller’s] views and the judge’s [Mr Justice Julian Knowles’s] comments about transgender issues would be offensive to most of our readers and our staff.”

This summarises the problem. Views within the publishing industry have become so deeply skewed that they have wholly lost sight of what the general public/adult readers believe. The A-Level age group presumably come under the same reader cohort as young adult readers. And novels for that group have all been censored by “sensitivity readers” for years.

Bad enough to censor fiction so that young readers are unable to get a balanced and realistic view of the world. It is now revealed that this has been extended to non-fiction, and that is terrifying.

I only understood that after relaying it to DH, during which I rearranged the order of many paragraphs

Judge's opinion = biased, albeit within the confines of the law
Reporting of judge's opinion = tried to be accurate and unbiased
This reportage (being an unbiased report of a biased opinion) was itself thought of as biased
Lobby group asked to unbias it by providing 'balance'
Publishers defend their attempts at unbias/balancing
Author of article gets justifiably cross at all of this and resigns from chairman post
General public puts head in hands (or like )

I think A level students, ironically, would best best advised to go look at the court report itself (and try not to faint)

Ian Yule resigned as Chairman of the A level board in response to his accurate summary of Judge Knowles' ruling being submitted to Mermaids. His scathing words are a good summary of the profound dysfunction going on here:

This article contained little or no commentary by me, and no comments whatsoever on the issue of transgenderism,” he said. “My article did not express my own thoughts or beliefs but was a straightforward and accurate report of a High Court judgment.” He added: “If the judgment of a respected High Court judge is likely to upset such students and their teachers, they have no business studying or teaching this subject. ”In its justification for the intervention, a Hodder editor told him: “The claimant’s [Harry Miller’s] views and the judge’s [Mr Justice Julian Knowles’s] comments about transgender issues would be offensive to most of our readers and our staff

Does anyone think it would be worth sending this to the Minister for Education? I’m not sure if it’s the right channel?

I agree with PP that this really is disturbing. What I would like to know is how normal it is. Does this publisher (or any other) normally seek to edit law reports in order to reflect particular ideological Positions? Do they normally seek help from outside lobby groups when doing that?

I can see that they may seek "comment" on legal rulings to run alongside the ruling, but no, I wouldn't think editing them is normal at all. (And if they did seek comment, then why that of a known ideological lobby group?) But now, who knows? The editor's comment about it being "offensive": says it all really, also the fact he seems to have removed large chunks of the ruling he didn't like. He took an ideological stand. As above, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he wasn't one of those who signed the letter last time.

I am not finding it underwhelming. It’s utterly terrifying that the deluded leaders of a lobby group have this much influence, which includes being consulted on what material is taught to law students and being invited to amend the findings of a high court ruling.

That article is unusually poorly written by Times standards. They could have made the point much more clearly.

If the intent of a textbook is to show contrasting examples of a situation- a time when very similar situations were handled in different ways, say- then asking a group for an example of that isn't unreasonable. Changing the first example however... not reasonable.

We need to get away from trigger warnings all the time. Anyone studying law needs to be able to cope with reading a range of cases. I think trigger warnings only make sense in situations like on Mumsnet where you are just randomly clicking on stuff and can find yourself reading something disturbing without warning.