Come on you Daily Mail supporters

Did anytime see 'Have I Got News For You?' tonight? Very interesting revelations about the owners of the Daily Mail and their support for the Blackshirts and the Nazis as against his Ed Milliband's father fought for Britain in WW2.

This memorial service was held at Guy's Hospital, presumably because that would have been where the uncle had worked. It wouldn't have been open to the public.

OK. But is intruding such as that a crime? If so, we will have laws to deal with it. If not, do we need to make it a crime to gatecrash?

As I said before, I am not trying to justify bad behaviour. That isn't the point. The point is that state censorship is wrong and not just wrong but dangerous. No amount of justified outrage at awful newspaper articles and awful journalist behaviour changes that.

I think one has to detach one's emotions from the issues. If that sounds pompous or anything else undesirable... well <shrug>

Offence if not criminal is the price of freedom. Offence if criminal will be dealt with by the rule of law.

I don't actually think Memorial Services are in fact open to the public. They are not acts of worship and people are usually invited to attend. While no one would take exception to outsiders wishing to pay their respects, the presence of a journalist can only be construed as intrusive.

I agree with you absolutely, Bags. And with Gagagran about the mealy-mouthed hypocrisy flying around.

The DM gave Ed Milliband the right of reply, which he did admirably. People are then free to make up their own minds about his father. I know which 'side' I find more convincing.

The article asks if what the DM wrote about Ralph Milliband was different, essentially, from what people on the 'other side' said about Margaret Thatcher at her funeral. The article seemed to conclude that there was no essential difference. Is there a difference?

I'm not defending either, by the way, and what I think about Margaret Thatcher and Ralph (or Ed) Milliband is irrelevant.

Thanks Bags. As ever, you put into words just what I would say if I had your erudition. I agree with all you say.

I also find the hypocrisy of Alistair Campbell nauseating. He and Damian McBride were prime exponents of the gutter press, yet Campbell is now pontificating against the DM.

Penstemmon and absent, I sit corrected.

The dead can be libelled , no law to protect their name, and it wasn't a Church service it was a private memorial service held in a hospital not in a public building.

There was nothing the reporters could claim was in the public interest by questioning family members about a man who died years ago whilst in a memorial service for a man who died a few months ago.

I support freedom of speech but not freedom of gutter press and we have too much gutter press now

No, I am not saying that, mamie. There are constraints already on criminal press activity such as libel. There is an argument, which I haven't yet heard countered effectively (logically), that we have adequate laws in place already to deal with such things as you mention.

"Gatecrashing" memorial services is an emotive way of saying that there is a reporter at the service. The writer in the Spectator says this is quite common. Aren't church services usually public?

I don't like the things you mention any more than you do, but I don't think they are necessarily criminal offences. Not everything that disgusts us is criminal, nor should be.

I am as shocked as anyone by the intrusiveness of the gutter press, but I don't think state censorship of the press is the way to deal with it. I am convinced that state censorship is a bad idea because it is inherently dangerous. Just think USSR and other dictatorships.

So are you saying Bags, that there should be no constraints on the press? That it is OK to misrepresent, distort, lie, to make a story? Is it OK to doorstep people, gatecrash memorial services, listen to messages on the mobile phones of murder victims?
Are there no limits to the freedom of the press? Genuinely interested to know where you would draw the line.

Whenever there is talk of curtailing freedom of the press I think of a time during the cold war when I was still very young but beginning to understand the problems people in the USSR were having if they dared to disagree with The State and the state controlled press. It's a good memory to have from my teenage years. Not preventing dissent (even when you find it hateful or, in today's favourite word, 'offensive') is essential to freedom and freedom is essential to democracy.

anno and bags It wasn't Voltaire himself but S. G. Tallentyre summarising Voltaire's opinion in The Friends of Voltaire.

I think it was actually Voltaire's biographer summing up Voltaire's attitudes so suppose it is Voltaire in a way!

Freedom of speech is a valuable ideal to try an uphold but there are always provisos! One is speech that sets out to stir up violence against an individual /group ..hence incitement laws.

I suppose it is like any 'right' .. it comes with responsibilities. Sadly some do not take their responsibilities seriously and provide fire to those who want to curb freedom of speech. If all of the press expressed their different opinions, views and ideals without vitriol and emotive personal jibes nobody would be calling for a curb on them!

Good article, thanks bags.

Yes. And I doubt whether all the moral indignation in the world will put the DM out of business overnight, or any time soon, as some seem to be expecting!

Voltaire, I think!

'one agrees'

The Spectator article is not about justifying disreputable, twisted, tendentious, malignant articles in the DM. That should be clear from the title, not to mention the contents of the article. It is about defending freedom of the press. Hacked Off appears not to understand how valuable a thing this is to a democratic society, regardless of whether on agrees with which ever 'side' or publication is publishing disreputable, twisted, tendentious and malignant articles which, in themselves, cannot be justified.

The argument for freedom of the press (and freedom of speech/expression generally) would apply if it had been one of the politically left-wing papers that had broken the rules of decency.

Beats me why people don't understand this. Who was it who said "I disagree with what you say and how you say it but I will defend to the death your right to do so"? Or words to that effect.

I watched QT at my sons last night, Mehdi Hasan certainly gave Quentin Letts a lesson in arguing your point and when in a whole stop digging. I fear it fell on deaf ears however. Sometimes what is moraly wrong cannot be hijacked by the argument of 'in the public interest'. Whichever way it is packaged what the DM wrote in headline and or editorial was wrong therefore indefencible. They should stop trying to come up with spurious arguments as to why they justify their actions as they have lost credibility and no one is listening now.

The Metro distributed free all over the place is an arm of the DM too and just as much a pernicious rag.

Did they plan to upstage the Tory conference with a story about the DM? Possibly not.

Yes, indeed! Thanks, thatbags.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/10/the-daily-mail-is-disreputable-twisted-tendentious-and-malignant-thank-heavens-for-that/. A good, uncomfortable article.