Nottingham Post Ban di Reform Council Un “massiccio attacco alla democrazia locale” | Riforma UK
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/28/ban-on-news-outlet-by-nottinghamshire-county-council-reform-leader-a-massive-attack-on-local-democracy
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14 commenti
Its not just the Nottingham Post, its LDRS reporters too, all their stories are pooled and available to news organisations for free, which many of the big newspapers use for publishing local stories.
At a local news level, I’m not sure who they would be speaking too as Reach + LDRS would be the main journalists that will cover them?
This must be the famous free speech they keep banging on about.
PR blackballing also backfires very often. Yes, it makes the hacks work a bit harder but they have a strong incentive to run critical stories that will contain at the end “Council was contacted for comment and declined to respond”. It also undercuts any libel lawsuits as one of the standard tests now is whether the journo tried to check the story.
With Reform, it’s either friendly journalists or nothing.
Just watch how Farage squirms whenever pressed to explain how his plans are supposed to work.
Reform don’t want people to hold them to account. What a surprise.
Reminder that the rights modus operandi has **always** been “Free speech for me, not for thee”.
When they talk about free speech they mean their right to spout offensive, racist, homophobic and transphobic shite, that common decency has tended to ban, *not* the presses ability to investigate and report on what they are doing and saying.
And here I thought we were supposed to have free speech and freedom of the press holding politicians to account.
That includes everyone. If you can’t sit in front of the mass media and defend and explain your policies, then either those policies are incredibly shit for people and you know it, or you’re not suited for government.
Being able to handle the media is one thing you need to be able to do as a politician. You don’t handle it via a blackout or removing it from access to all your meetings or asking questions. You learn to answer them, even if that means giving a typical politician non-answer
Farage already emulating his beloved Putin in councils he holds, imagine if he gets anywhere near power
The party of free speech banning journalists. How can anyone seriously support this racket?
It was always going to happen as they continue to copy the US right-wing playbook, line by line.
A lot of the “free-speech” warriors over the last decade have been laying the groundwork for this – deliberately muddying the waters between actual censorship and other citizens disagreeing with you. When you conflate the two, Reform voters will see this and think, “No worse than students protesting a visiting speaker to their uni!”
When you combine that with headway that right wing mouthpieces have made on social media, you end up with a loyal core base who you’ve trained to see any criticism or logical flaws in your party as part of the “conspiracy”.
It’s the Trump/Putin model where only extreme sycophancy will be tolerated and accountability is bad.
I can’t even imagine how amazing it’ll be when they get voted in to government. I mean, I was excited about Brexit – which has also been amazing – but this is different level.
It sure certainly is interesting how often the party of free speech attacks its own members for their speech and controls which media outlets are allowed to engage with them at all.
I’m sure this isn’t some kind of foreshadowing of what a totalitarian nightmare a Reform government would quickly descend into.
The Nottingham Post, owned by Reach PLC, owners of the Express, the Mirror and a truly insane amount of local papers. Another baller move by the people who brought you 12-year-old council leaders.
I managed to get a sneak peak at Reform’s manifesto for the next election:
– Replace BBC1 with Russia Today
– Bring back bum pinching in the workplace
– Legalise drink driving on Sundays