Comment Isn’t Free: Guardian to CLOSE Comments On Articles About ‘Race, Immigration and Islam’

Feb 1, 2016 by Jill

by Raheem Kassam, Breitbart:

“A new strategy is aiming to counter an unacceptable level of toxic commentary on our website”, an opinion piece began in yesterday’s Observer – the Sunday edition of the Guardian newspaper.

The article, written by the Observer’s “reader’s editor” Stephen Pritchard, outlines how the paper – which recently announced a massive cost cutting exercise – is going to start censoring its readers on articles about race, immigration, and Islam.

“We are living in an age of rage,” the piece begins, going on to explain that because “People are angry with government, with media, with religion, with migration, with Europe, [and] with big business”, the paper will no longer tolerate its readers expressing these views “below the line” on its website; ironically named “Comment is Free”.

The name comes from Charles Prestwich Scott, once editor of what was once called theManchester Guardian – now just the Guardian. The late Liberal Member of Parliament apparently always said that “comment is free, but facts are sacred”.

Now it appears that comment is sacred too. In the words of Pritchard, the Guardian has long sought to “curate a reasoned debate” instead of allowing for free speech (barring threats, etc). He bemoans the use of the comments section for “propaganda posting”, although the Guardian is notorious for allowing this behaviour above the line, even promoting anti-Israel material written by the leader of the terrorist outfit Hamas. They had to close the comments on that op-ed too.

Read here