Two weeks ago, Gript Media took the decision to publish on our social media channels, complete and unedited, a video we had obtained depicting the serious assault of a Garda in Dublin.
We did so because we believed that video and its contents to be in the public interest in all meanings of that term, not the least of which was that repeated accusations were made by agencies of the state claiming that “misinformation” had circulated online about the incident.
What better counter, we reasoned, to accusations of “misinformation” than to simply show the public the event as it took place, shorn of all commentary or inference?
The video itself depicts an assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” before repeatedly assaulting a Garda with a stabbing motion with an unknown weapon. Had the video been gratuitously graphic, or depicted somebody receiving a fatal injury, we would not have published it. Thankfully this was not the case. The video in question can be viewed below.
Within hours of our decision to publish the video, we learned that it had been “restricted”.
That is to say, social media platforms took active measures to limit its distribution and the number of Irish people who would see it.
We also learned that this censorship – which is what the restrictions amount to – was not an organic decision taken by the social media platforms but came about on foot of regulation from the State’s regulatory body for the media, Coimisiún na Meán.
Several months ago, without any great public fanfare, that agency introduced what it describes as an “online safety code”, amongst the objectives of which are to protect the public, especially young people, from “adult only content”, which the agency defines as including gratuitous or extreme violence, or pornography.
That code places specific responsibilities upon what it describes as “video sharing platforms”.
However, the code also includes an exemption for material which is “in the public interest”… “as long as children cannot necessarily see it”.
It may shock, but it should not surprise, readers to observe that this code is already being implemented in a strange way.
For example, as of today, the code does not apply at all to pornographic websites, which may still freely be accessed in Ireland by any person, of any age, with a normal internet connection. A code of practice for video sharing platforms which is specifically designed to protect children from pornography, in other words, is not being applied to pornographic websites.
It is, however, being applied selectively to videos depicting actual – if not gratuitous or extreme – violence against members of the state’s police force on the streets of the capital city.
It might – and indeed should – be argued that the net effect of the code so far has rather conveniently been to suppress footage of an incident that the state decried as being misinformation, rather than to protect a single child from the lure of pornography or extreme violence on websites dedicated to platforming those things.
We have a very clear view on this: That the state cannot be trusted with the power to regulate the news content that the public consumes.
The State and its agencies are not, and never shall be, neutral and impartial actors. They are political actors, with defined political objectives and agendas. This particular incident is a valuable illustration of that.
Clearly, a man attacking a Garda while uttering an Islamic prayer and war cry is a matter of public interest. It speaks to the changing nature of the nation, and the changing composition of the population. It speaks particularly to changes wrought at the very behest of the state and its policymakers. A state which has, also, sought overtly and repeatedly to deny that such changes have had, or even could have, any negative impacts.
This is a state therefore with a vested interest in restricting the distribution of content and footage and ideas which contradict its own mantras and assertions. In this case, we are forced to believe, that is exactly what has transpired.
The objective of protecting children from extreme content is a worthy one. But extreme content can reasonably easily be defined. It does not need to be adjudicated on a “case by case basis”.
Almost every restriction on human liberty ever conceived of by a Government has been justified on the basis that said restriction was in “the common good”. And in almost every case, the state has decided for itself what the “common good” amounts to.
But since states have a vested interest in their own perpetuity and stability, it is very easy for a Government to mistake the common good for its own narrow political interests. This, the Irish Government in particular does with great and relentless regularity.
Coimisiún na Meán is an unelected and unaccountable body. Unlike the politicians that established it, it may not be voted out of office. Its decisions may not be overturned at the ballot box by democratic vote. Its ethos, personnel, and central purpose are all politically attuned to a particular brand of progressive liberalism that prioritises the suppression and rejection of ideas that the state considers – as shorthand – “far right”.
It is also responsible, happily, for funding the very media that it purports to regulate. And thus the state which restricts the sharing of videos in the public interest also funds the very news outlets that might otherwise be expected to report on the suppression of the news.
The net effect of all of this is that the state, in this case, suppressed content and did so without the fact of that suppression even being reported. Your news ends up being censored without you ever knowing.
That is one reason why this publication will never, under any circumstances, accept funding from the Irish state or its agencies. Other publications may if they choose willingly supplicate themselves to becoming servants of Coimisiún na Meán.
We shall, in so far as we are able, remain servants of the public. And in this case, the public has a right to know what is being kept from them, and by whom.