Posts by Russell Brown
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
From what Gio has said it did appear to be a combination of both morals (shock horror) and commercial nous (Good God we don’t want to stand next to that pile of …).
I'm not sure how much if anything I can quote from the email I got from someone at Telecom outlining their internal discussion about it, but that's a reasonable summary. They even talked to some of their own major customers about it. It was quite a process, it began before they even received Giovanni's email, and people there felt quite strongly about taking a stand.
This is why I'm annoyed by the "boycott" line. It completely mischaracterises what happened.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
stopping people you don’t like from speaking widely doesn’t actually make it easier for you to get your message out there.
Two things. First, it’s not about “stopping people you don’t like”. Very specifically, it is about what those people say, not who they are.
Well, more about what they did, actually. It’s glib and disingenuous to keep pretending that this was all just about some reckons had by Willie and JT.
It’s actually about the appalling way they handled an extended interview with a teenage girl who had called to talk about a rape gang operating in her social group, including pressing her to tell them when she lost her virginity.
The “but free speech!” argument pretty much relies on this wilfull misdirection.
And yes, if Radio Live had anything resembling a decent editorial process, this wouldn’t have gone as far as it did.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to BenWilson,
I don’t know if this is really a quibble that matters.
I disagree. I think it's an important distinction.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Well, weren’t a lot of things I was talking about, undisputed boycotts? What word would you have me use?
Oh, come on. You wrote this:
Supporters of the boycott of Radio Live and its advertisers were hoping to silence the speech of those they see as placing blame on victims of rape
Can you show the Facebook page of this campaign to boycott advertisers? Where did supporters sign up? And which companies,, among the many who did not withdraw their advertising, were targeted?
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I’m not so sure. Maybe no formal organisation pushing a consumer boycott, but large numbers of individuals contacting advertisers- via twitter, facebook pages, email etc) along these lines.
Were any of the advertisers who didn’t withdraw targeted any way?
Can you even tell me their names? No. What happened was not a boycott and it’s misleading to characterise it that way.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Please point me to where I said they didn’t. Because I’d like to amend it, if you really think that’s what I said.
I want you to show us the boycott first.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to James Butler,
no boycott of any advertiser was undertaken or, so far as I’m aware, even proposed
It’s like the Man Ban: if you can convince enough people to call it a duck loudly enough and frequently enough then it is a duck.
Yeah, but Graeme’s not just “people”.
And he uses the word "boycott" 24 times in this post.
I’m a bit taken aback, to be honest.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Thomas Beagle,
You could respond that this is just a question of semantics, that the impact is the same, but I think it’s an important distinction because there was no threat to the advertisers.
It's way more than semantic. It's a key distinction. Graeme has opened his argument with a straw man.
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I don’t like advertiser boycotts; especially not boycotts of advertisers for the content of the programmes during which their advertising appears, and especially not if that programme is news or current affairs.
This seems a very odd way to begin, given that no boycott of any advertiser was undertaken or, so far as I’m aware, even proposed.
I may agree that the speech targeted in one boycott is ill-considered, or harmful in some way, but next time a boycott succeeds it might have the effect of reducing speech I like, or think is valuable.
What do you mean, “the next time”? Which advertisers were boycotted or had a boycott threatened against them this time?
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Well, this conversation has become rather pointless and negative.
On a more useful note, some interesting charts from Pew Research on Americans' changing attitudes to marijuana.