Christian Choice loses censorship case
The Christian Choice candidate for London Mayor has lost his High Court appeal against the BBC and ITV. As MWW revealed on 25 April, Alan Craig’s Party Election Broadcast was subject to revisions by the broadcasters because they thought some of the wording was potentially libellous to radical Islamic nut-jobs Tablighi Jamaat.
As it turns out, the BBC say that if Craig had challenged the revisions they would have “backed down and let them publish as they wished”. The judge in the case therefore dismissed the Christians’ claims of human rights breaches, saying they should have brought the legal challenge before the broadcast took place.
Hmm. Why would Christian Choice meekly roll over and agree to the broadcasters’ “commands” only to come back fighting with a human rights case after the broadcast took place? It can’t be because they wanted to play the victim card. Christians do not like to think of themselves as being persecuted for their beliefs (do they?). And the fact that the story was picked up by the papers only few days before the polls opened …
OK, we admit it. We were duped by zombie-worshipping fundies playing the victim card in the run up to the local elections. Yes, we do feel silly.
At least Alan Craig was ordered to pay the BBC’s £11,875 legal costs. Every cloud…
UPDATE: (16 Dec, 2008) Note that the Alan Craig referred to in this article is NOT the Alan V Craig of the NASUWT teachers’ union (as Alan V Craig is understandably keen to point out in the comments below).
As far as I can tell, Craig was one of the few mayoral candidates not at a public meeting where the others spoke, and where a major aim was to minimise the BNP vote.
Leaning over backwards to be fair, it might be that he wasn’t invited, but if he was and didn’t go that tells us where he thinks his natural constituency is and suggests he’d rather play on racist myths than make a factual case for opposing the mosque. But then, he can’t do the second without inviting questions about his own ‘power base’.
[…] that the BBC and ITV had censored his party election broadcast (PEB). His case has been rejected (via) by the High Court. It also turns out that the story isn’t quite as clear-cut as Craig was […]
PLEASE NOTE The ‘Alan Craig’ of this item is NOT Allan V. Craig of NASUWT Teachers’ Union