The Times and Harry The Owl

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Oh, well, this is interesting

twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1292160071208706054

I think The Times have fluffed it with that incomprehensible headline.

This, erm, how can I put it, isn't the S related thing.

Yes totally different issue altogether - and M thing rather than an S thing

So article written to explain Harry’s ruling and Mermaids were asked to ‘tone’ it by JKR’s publisher. Author pissed off.
I’m irritated that education is being directed by Mermaids, but it’s not overstep in this case - they were literally asked to review it by the publisher.
I don’t really get it.
I don’t really understand why A level students were receiving an article about the ruling either. Was it part of a comprehension exercise?

I need to read it again.

I’m not sure it was worth the soup.

Yes the headline is dreadful. No share token here, but going by what is visible and fair cop's tweets, it looks likethe judgement in Harry Miller's case was to be included in some sort of text book/resource for people studying law and Mermaids were invited to review/edit/censor it, presumably to the point of making it sound like the judge said Harry was a wrong 'un and the police jolly well ought to be checking all our thinking.

(I might be extrapolating that last bit.)

There is a share token on the Fair Cop thread

It's not an easy article to follow unfortunately. Probably because the subject matter is a bit dry. However it's actually quite disturbing if I've understood correctly.

Mermaids at the invitation of Hatchette decided that students should not be allowed to read the complete ruling of a high court judge because they didn't like it. So they censored/changed it to suit them better.

It's yet another huge red flag about censorship and democracy.

Very poorly written article. Not at all clear what on Earth it was trying to say.

It might be a red flag but not one the public are going to get excited over. There is a lot of worrying stuff out there but unless you know the back story it doesn’t hit home.

Yeah a little bit more on the share token but not much. I’d want to read the original and the 4 page Mermaid commentary
That would make an interesting lesson on bias for A level students, law or otherwise.

@Aesopfable

It might be a red flag but not one the public are going to get excited over. There is a lot of worrying stuff out there but unless you know the back story it doesn’t hit home.

Yes unfortunately I think you are right.

It is evidence of a worrying level of political interference to the law by a lobby group though.

More worrying is the probability that current Law Students are a product of woke culture and actual think this is acceptable.

that even a court ruling (right or wrong) should be edited so an not to in any infer that maybe, just maybe trans activists are occassionally wrong!

So we have a civil war to get rid of the divine right of kings, but now have willing walked into be subjected to the divine right of trans!

Mermaids at the invitation of Hachette decided that students should not be allowed to read the complete ruling of a high court judge because they didn't like it. So they censored/changed it to suit them better.

So Hachette, a major publisher, asks a lobby group to censor/approve its resources for law students? That is truly terrifying.

More concerning is not what law students might think but what they are required to write to pass their A levels...

so William Schatner is tweeting and being RT by fair cop

It is extremely disturbing. This is a law magazine for A Level law students where a factual report on a high court ruling dealing freedom of speech has been censored by a political lobby group who did not like the ruling and claimed that A-level students would find it "offensive".

The censorship was so extreme that the author of the report, and chair of the magazine, resigned.

It's just extremely frightening to think that a lobby group is now controlling what law students are allowed to learn about the law.

As I understand the article, I don't think the censoring was directly done by Mermaids - they were consulted, but it was Hachette / Hodder editors who cut large parts of the original article because they were worried about causing offence.

Sending the article to be reviewed by Mermaids is a bit of a giveaway of bias, but I find it even more disturbing to think even if they hadn't involved Mermaids the editors sounded quite prepared to hack the article so it omitted key remarks by the judge simply because they didn't want to upset (some) readers. And if the author hadn't resigned, we might never have known.

Here's the quote from the article: Even before [sending it to Mermaids], Hodder had heavily edited the court report, removing two-thirds of the original, explaining: “We also have to be very careful how we present certain views.”

Share token

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/73178706-d8d7-11ea-b191-4a02022fcddf?shareToken=ed75f70e5820e727fc088359a080c621

suggested in vain that one way out of the impasse was for A-Level Law Review to pioneer “trigger warnings” about articles that some students might find offensive and provide “safe spaces” for students by providing independent sources of advice at the end of potentially hard-hitting articles.

FFS! I really hope I never get charged with a serious crime, if this is the level of emotional fortitude that the lawyers of tomorrow have!

@DadDadDad

Here's the quote from the article: Even before [sending it to Mermaids], Hodder had heavily edited the court report, removing two-thirds of the original, explaining: “We also have to be very careful how we present certain views.”

'Certain views'? Certain bloody views!

The views of a high court judge summarising a test case.

To students learning law. Tomorrow's lawyers.

Bloody hell.

I’m wondering how Mr Justice Julian Knowles’s feels about his ruling and comments re transgender issues being described as “offensive“?

Are there other instances where a biased lobby group gets to rewrite the legal facts and findings of a case to make their bias look better?

‘Management at Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK, referred the article on the ruling to Mermaids, asking it to suggest “examples we can use to counteract the tone and opinions in the piece” and to suggest changes to “anything you feel is untrue, unfair and/or offensive”.

In response to the invitation to suggest changes, the head of legal and policy at Mermaids sent four closely typed pages, including a comment that the article “doesn’t come over as balanced”’.

In response to criticism on twitter for mermaids overreach, Helen (mimmymum) states this is a non story of the author having a ‘hissy fit’ and leaving.

twitter.com/mimmymum/status/1292257211247480836

I don't think Harry was overstating the importance of this article.

Although his reference to 'not that author' was a bit confusing.

This describes an incredibly important and worrying example of censorship. Hachette's actions are extremely close to the kind of fascist or Stasi-like censorship of free speech that the judgement itself referred to.

It is yet another, bitter irony, that it was Hachette - JK Rowling's publisher - who were undertaking this extreme censorship of the truth re a judgement ABOUT FREE SPEECH at exactly the same time thay they were publicly stating that they backed JK Rowling for free speech reasons!!

If the celebrated author JK Rowling had written the plot (in both senses) herself, I doubt she could have come up with a more pointed example of how free speech is currently being undermined or of fascist overreach.

And it is indeed fascist, in that it seeks quite deliberately to hide the truth and undermine the rule of law, in favour of a politically-preferred version of the truth. Moreover, what Hachette is trying to hide the facts about is that police actions giving people criminal records for thought crimes had been judged fascist and Stasi-like!

I wonder what JK Rowling's views and actions will be? She is, after all Hachette's golden goose, so they cannot afford not to support her directly.

But behind her back, they are undermining everything she believes in, and indeed, the whole ethos of her books, which are allegories of the fight against fascism.

Hypocrisy does not get worse than this.Attacks on free speech do not get worse than this. This absolutely stinks.