Be Excellent To Each Other

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
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 – for the first time in memory – 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.
The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself."
The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.
He said: "Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of 'Colonel B', granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of 'national security'. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published."
The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, "it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to".

I don't believe it!

The link opened in a new tab?
<runs for the hills>

Hooray for the Streisand Effect. You'd think people understood it by now.

Ahh it's Carter-Fuck who issued the gag order. Is this one court issued or just a letter sent from them? If the latter then it can be ignored, they do this stuff all the time.

/Hmmm skimming over the article it doesn't say, I'm assuming it's a letter, whichever way it's poor reporting and possibly the Guardian stirring things up.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Clever reporting on behalf of the Guardian. They knew exactly what would happen when they published that 'non-article', and they knew that what hit the intertubes would have their name all over it, even though they didn't actually print any of it.

Nope - from reading Wikileaks and Guido Fawkes they seem to have managed to get a "super-injunction" from a judge off the out-of-hours 'essence of time' roster.

Which makes the same MP's question in the same list asking "So how exactly is that roster constructed, then?" all the more pertinent.

I'm pretty sure trying to fuck with parliament like that should be subject to some serious punishment, too. Fraud or treason against the people of the country, or something.

One MP, who the Guardian is currently prohibited from identifying, said he would ask the Speaker to consider taking action against Carter-Ruck for contempt of parliament.

Carter Ruck have thrown in the Towel. The 2pm Court Hearing is not going ahead, Media now free to report on Trafigura. Seriousface ends, please return to bitching about Stephen Gately...

See Gaywood's comment. I'd love to think that the whole thing was deliberately instigated as a subtle whistleblowing.

Interesting theory but it's Carter-Ruck, they have less morals than the firm in 'The Devils Advocate'.