I spent the early part of this afternoon in a House of Commons committee room at a rally and lobby for Hacked Off. This is the group who are trying to get proper accountability in the UK press and implementation of the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press. In the course of it a hack for "Guido Fawkes" tweeted a misrepresentation of the speech by John Cleese (yes that John Cleese). Somebody alerted the Chair of the meeting, Dr Evan Harris to the tweet and the alleged journalist was called out. This is now being represented as a "show trial" by his site (link above)
The tweet said:
@MediaGuido
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John Cleese compares journalists to murderers at Hacked Off rally: "murderers would like to regulate themselves too"
1:13 PM - 25 Feb 2015
Since I was there, I can tell you that this is a gross misrepresentation of Cleese's statement achieved by doing exactly what most of us here are aware of, the use of selective quotes out of context.
The meeting was attended by a number of victims of the UK press, including Dr Evan Harris, John Cleese and Hugh Grant, but mostly ordinary members of the public who had been falsely accused of wrong doing (The guy who shouted "how can you sleep at night" was one of these). There were a large number of speakers to get through. Representatives of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats (Simon Hughes, Justice minister) were there to give support to the policy of implementing the Leveson recommendations in full and to include the pledge in the election manifestos so the newspapers cannot claim that the next Parliament will not have a mandate on the subject. Although there were individual Conservative MPs there in a personal capacity, the official party line was represented by a stuffed toy poodle.
The reason Wickham was heckled was for his claim it "was a direct quote". Seven words of his tweet were a direct quote but it misses out the context and totally misrepresented what Cleese had actually said (I have a recording of his FULL statement).
Even more so, Guido Fawkes is taking up the cudgels for the likes of Rupert Murdoch claiming to represent a "free press". The nastiness of this can be seen in the link by the use of "Dr" Evan Harris. Why they put it in quotes is obvious - to discredit somebody who before he was elected as an MP was a medical doctor.
Wickham got what everyone on here would probably like to do to so-called journalists at one time or another. He got caught out when he thought his misrepresentations would not be noticed, at least until he was safely back in his rat hole.
I'll do a fuller diary about the implications of Leveson and the substance of the meeting later but thought it important to place this evidence on record.
I have the exchange as part of an 88Mb WAV file. If somebody can let me know how to include it, please do.