I wondered how the Guardian would react to my criticism of their editorial staff on comment is free. What they appear to have done is leave the article up, but remove links to it from the front page and the Comment is Free page. So there is no way 99.9% 0f readers will know it is there.
It was only posted at 6pm last night, and articles posted long before it are still listed in cif as “Latest”, but this one has been removed. The only way anybody visiting the site could find it would be to go to Comment Is Free then Index, then M, then Murray, then choose it. The Guardian can therefore claim they didn’t delete it – just made it impossible to find if you didn’t know about it.
So this link still works –
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/craig_murray/2007/06/reids_new_best_friends.html
The remarks in question come in a comment I added at the end of the thread.
The Guardian has removed any reference to the article from the home page and cif listings, so there is no way anybody visiting the Guardian today knows it is there.
So I am asking everybody with access to a blog or site to post the above link over the course of the next week, to defeat the Guardian’s attempt to cut off dissent at its abandonment of its liberal tradition.
We have now mirrored the Guardian page just in case they do now scrub the original
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/CiF/reids_new_best_friends.html
Please post a comment after it – it would not take many more posts for it to reappear in the list of featured articles in the “Most commented” section. I presume that is driven by an automatic software.
Craig, the deleted article is now available permanently at the following url:
http://www.craigmurrary.co.uk/CiF/reids_new_best_…
I've posted it on Angels in Marble.
It's still linked as far as I can see, even if not directly from the front page:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/
>>> Contributors
>>> M
>>> Craig Murray
>>> Reid's new best friends
Roger,
yes, just checked that. Where it has been deleted from is the listings of current/latest entries – it was only posted last night at 6pm, and entries posted well before it appear in "latest".
I accept that, if somebody knows it is there and has persistence, they could track it down in the manner you described. "Hidden" is probably the best description. Someone reading the paper online will have no means of discovering its existence unless specifically searching for articles by Craig Murray.
Craig,
Your article can also be found under 'Previous posts'. The link to Previous posts is at the bottom of the left column on the 'comment is free…' home page. Though that still means it is effectively filed away and no longer current.
The Guardian people are disgraceful, considering their mandate –
"…owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity…" (from Wikipedia)
I've posted a very hasty link at Areopagitica http://freecommonwealth.blogspot.com (and a comment at cif)
Interesting development –
Someone just texted to say that they read the article just after it was posted at 6pm last night and left a comment, but noticed it was already pulled from the cif page when they tried to go back later in the evening. If true, it means the Guardian pulled it a long while before my observation about Rusbridger's wig, and after it had been up only a very few hours.
Would explain the lack of comments from the numerous NuLab trolls who haunt cif.
"Please post a comment after it"
When the Guardian posted one of their hysterical articles about the British dead on 7/7, I posted the observation that larger numbers of Iraqi civilians were dying in similar actions on a regular basis, without any particular concern shown by the Guardian.
I was banned from commenting further.
The BBC also have plenty of issues when it comes to free comment. Once they had a "Have Your Say" on Google's censorship in China, and people started pointing out that the BBC also censors things. Comments mentioning BBC censorship were quickly removed, which provoked complaints, which were also removed. Eventually the censors gave up, but this resulted in all "Have Your Say" threads being locked down.
If you want to post a comment and have it appear straight away, you have to go to the BBC Message Boards, which are fairly hidden away. The Today board used to be a place for vibrant discussion of important international issues, but they have now locked it down so that you can only discuss bland issues of their choosing, such as "Channel Four – has it lost its edge?"
Comments are now closed on CiF – apparently there's a three day maximum time scale for commenting.
How remarkably convenient.
Craig,
As Chuck notes above, the Guardian has closed this saying "Our policy is to close threads after three days."
This is a lie.
A quick trawl reveals several posts more than three days old still accepting comments.
Sorry, I was too hasty here. All the comments four or more days old do seem to be closed.