Should the TFA sue the BBC for libel?

http://www.tfa.net/the_freedom_association/2010/12/bbc-must-make-full-apology-for-bnp-smear-on-the-freedom-association.html

This is such a bad idea I just don't know where to begin.

Do they not see the irony of a libertarian organisation  such as The Freedom Association suing to suppress free speech and fair comment??


The Eurosceptic movement seems to be afflicted by the most alarming kind of hysteria and irrationality and there seems no helping them at all.

I post this merely to put on record that I have tried to warn them against this insane course of action, which has apparently goaded into a frenzy - there is no other word for it - of anti-BNP histrionics.

"Calm down, calm down," I want to say, in my best Michael Winner e-Sure voice ....

 PS    They have deleted my comment and have now disabled me from commenting!  There is one sensible comment:

Tanino said...

For what it's worth, I don't believe that any comparison could be drawn between The Freedom Association and the BNP but I think that it would be coherent with Libertarian principles to let the BBC do as it wishes.

I don't believe that one can arbitrarily call comparison to the BNP a smear. If I say that the Labour Party is a moderate version of Salvador Allende's Socialist Party, is that a smear? Most people would say it isn't, Allende is widely regarded a great man. But to say that the Labour party is a moderate version of the Soviet Union's Communist Party would be regarded as a smear by most people. In summary, I believe that whether the comparison to the BNP is a good or bad thing is fundamentally subjective and one should not be made to apologise for it. If the BBC apologised and accepted that the comparison to the BNP is a smear, that would surely be a breach of impartiality and would be considered anti-BNP bias.

"When a leftist sees something he doesn't like on television, he phones up to complain, when a man of the right sees something he doesn't like on television, he changes the channel".

Saturday, 18 December 2010 at 06:14 PM