Joey Barton, the footballer turned manager, may be a controversial figure, but is it really the business of the sports minister, Stuart Andrew, to threaten to silence him on Twitter and Facebook? Andrew this week described Barton’s derisive remarks about female football commentators as ‘dangerous comments that open the floodgates for abuse’. He called upon Ofcom to take action under the new Online Safety Act.

The notion of free speech – including the freedom to be offensive – seems increasingly alien to ministerial minds. The Online Safety Act only came into law in October, and politicians already think it’s up to them to regulate who says what online.

For 300 years, newspapers vigorously fought off any attempt by the state to suppress freedom of expression. But the new media world of Silicon Valley has capitulated quite quickly. In an era when more people get their news from Twitter, Facebook or Instagram than from any newspaper, these companies exert huge power. The national conversation has shifted to online. It is edited and controlled by bots programmed in California by companies whose main concern is to make money from adverts. The old press barons took free speech seriously; Silicon Valley sees its power over content as a negotiating chip. It is happy to share that power with government provided that its profits aren’t threatened.

The notion of free speech seems increasingly alien
to ministerial minds

Ofcom, the media regulator, is gearing up for its new role. Two-thirds of all children, it says, are subject to ‘potential online harm’ every month – so it needs 500 specialist staff to ‘deliver the online safety regime’. What will these employees be up to? How transparent will the processes be? What kind of guidance will they give to social media giants on what is ‘safe’, and to what extent will this guidance overlap with what government ministers say about the jokes of Jimmy Carr or the tweets of Joey Barton? How would they protect the likes of Novara Media, the left-wing website whose videos were once deleted by YouTube?

What began as an attempt to address online material that was blamed for persuading teenagers to take their own lives has now evolved into a catch-all piece of legislation to suppress any material which someone, somewhere may regard as ‘legal but harmful’. When he was running for the Tory leadership, Sunak hinted that he would remove that clause. In No. 10, he decided to keep it – saying that under-18s needed to be protected from encountering ‘harmful’ content online. The definition has survived. Such an extremely wide remit constitutes a generalised attack on free speech.

Andrew made his comments about Barton when he was asked a question by the Commons committee on Culture, Media and Sport. What he should have said is: ‘Personally I think his views are obnoxious, but in my official capacity as sports minister it’s not for me to comment. It is for the police to decide whether this, or anyone else’s remarks on Twitter, constitute criminality. Many people may be offended by what gets said on social media, but quite rightly we have a very high bar for what constitutes illegality, because it is essential that the right of free speech be respected.’

When the Online Safety Bill was debated, scarcely anyone on any bench raised free speech concerns. Politicians of all hues love the idea of having power over what can be said and being able to call Silicon Valley to heel. Driven by financial interests, the tech giants obey.

The exception is Elon Musk who, after buying Twitter, found out that the website had been blacklisting the accounts of academics who had been scrutinising lockdowns. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, was one. ‘Censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures,’ he later said. ‘A generation of children were hurt.’ 

What the Culture, Media and Sport department should be worried about how easy it is for Silicon Valley to distort public debate. Facebook, for example, still refuses to explain to The Spectator why it labelled as ‘false information’ an article by two academics scrutinising the scientific rationale for face masks. The company doesn’t respond to emails. It’s answerable to no one. Yet it runs adverts in Westminster boasting about how adept it is at ‘working with’ governments.

Publishers and governments should be kept apart. This is the democratic tradition: government and the press ought to be kept separate. This is harder to oversee if governments actually buy publications, as the Emirati government is now seeking to do with both the Telegraph and this magazine. Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, is now deciding whether to let the deal go ahead. She faces difficult questions. Is it plausible that the Emirati state would spend hundreds of millions on buying British publications and genuinely want no influence? What guarantees of editorial freedom could be credible?

The government certainly should be concerned about autocracies buying British publications, but it should also be concerned about its own drift towards autocratic censorship. The Online Safety Act, which passes the duty of censorship to publishers, is inspired by the model introduced in China.

These are crucial times for the future of free speech in the media. Kevin Hollinrake, the Post Office minister, complained this week of ‘trial by media’. But were it not for the media, how many scandals would fail to be brought to light? In an increasingly illiberal age, the need to protect press diversity and freedom is greater than ever./>