Stop Funding Hate: a nasty, elitist campaign for press censorship
by Brendan O’Neill, Spectator:
Intolerance wears a progressive mask in the 21st century. Students hound political undesirables off campus in the name of ‘protecting diversity’. Adverts are banned from the London Underground in the name of women’s rights. Rappers and other hotheads are barred from Britain on the basis that their utterances are ‘not conducive’ to our good, progressive way of life. And now assorted leftists and tweeters are seeking to punish tabloid newspapers, to starve them of big revenue, in the name of promoting tolerance. Yes, intolerance – in this case of the redtop press and its right to say what it wants – is tolerance.
Stop Funding Hate is a new campaign aimed at getting big businesses — like Lego, John Lewis, Walkers Crisps, Virgin — to stop advertising in what are referred to as ‘hate newspapers’: that is, tabloids, primarily the Daily Mail. So leftists, who are meant to be anti-big business, and particularly anti big business sticking its moneyed, self-interested nose into political life and debate, are calling on big business to use its clout to harm newspapers that say disagreeable things. They want huge corporations — Virgin is a $19bn business, Lego a $5bn one — to put pressure on newspapers; to tell them we will stop giving you money unless you change your editorial tone. Let’s curb the euphemisms and all the talk of promoting tolerance — this is a sly, sinister effort to chill and tame the press; a marshalling of capitalist power to punish newspapers and force them to change. It’s a stab at censorship, not a cry for tolerance.
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