Raoul Moat and the unacceptable face of Facebook
Raoul Moat and the unacceptable face of Facebook - Telegraph
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In the stand-off between David Cameron and Facebook last week, regarding a tribute page called "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend!", I found myself instinctively on Cameron's side. Moat was a 6ft 3in, 17-stone bouncer and bodybuilder who was addicted to steroids and had a nasty temper, so nasty that he had served a prison sentence this year for assaulting a juvenile relation. Upon his release, he shot Samantha Stobbart, his former lover and the mother of his young daughter, her boyfriend Chris Brown, and a policeman, David Rathband. Brown was killed, Stobbart and Rathband seriously injured. Some legend, eh?
Moat's suicide was a squalid end to a life full of violent aggression and rampaging self-pity. No doubt he had psychiatric problems, but in the hierarchy of public sympathy, his rightful place is far below that of his blameless victims. And yet the site attracted well over 30,000 members, as it rapidly became clear that the grim conclusion of the heavily publicised manhunt, along with Moat's self-confessed hatred of the police, had turned him into a popular outlaw among some disaffected onlookers.
The Prime Minister objected to the contents of the page, but Facebook refused to take it down on the grounds that "those who think he is a hero are entitled to their opinion". That view was echoed by the page's instigator, a 21-year-old student and single mother from Burnley called Siobhan O'Dowd. She eventually deleted it – only for a replacement to spring up almost immediately – but said of her admiration for Moat: "That's my opinion, and everyone's entitled to their own opinion."
Sure they are. But the argument between Cameron and Facebook hinged on whether everyone is therefore entitled to broadcast or publish that opinion, however offensive. It is a clash between old values and new, and it is rapidly becoming the defining cultural question of our age.
Twenty years ago, or even 10, the media was certainly more elitist, but it was also simpler and more coherent. Broadcasters and newspapers were accountable to their readers, owners and management, and there was a constant running debate over what had an acceptable place in civilised discourse. The decision-makers might not always have made the right choice, but the duty was none the less taken seriously. Letters to newspapers that were full of violent views, or just plain crazy, were crumpled up and put in the bin, no doubt to the fury of their authors.
At times when journalists were judged to have got it badly wrong – as with The Sun's coverage of the Hillsborough disaster – they faced the wrath of readers and entire communities, who also had the power to wreak grievous commercial damage if they stopped buying the newspaper.
All that still goes on, of course – but the advent of the internet has changed the nature of national discussion forever. It has democratised expression, often removing the filter of an editor with the power to cut or censor. In some senses, this has been a tremendous boon, allowing a voice to everyone from a lonely, witty housewife to a blogging Burmese monk. But it has also given voice to every embittered, misanthropic lunatic with access to a computer.
The effect is not always confined to the inducement of distaste. After a rash of disgusting online attacks, including from one person hoping "she dies a horrible death", Miss Stobbart – a frightened 22-year-old woman who was attempting to escape from Moat – has been placed under police guard. Similar protection was deemed necessary for the Koupparis family, whose baby twins were attacked by a fox, after they were subjected to threatening posts from alleged "animal rights" protesters.
Never has Marshall McLuhan's edict that "the medium is the message" been more apposite. The speed of the internet culture, and the frequent absence of any moderating influence, means that one sometimes has the impression of a nation that has developed a collective Tourette's syndrome, in which every fleeting, obscene and often cruel thought is instantly honoured with expression. Cameron and other politicians are struggling to maintain a moral consensus in an age dominated by moral relativism. This will not be the last argument of its kind.
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*sigh* And Dave loses all the points he gained for refusing to consider a burqa ban. This is such a Blairish thing to do.
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