Jon Gaunt has lost his High Court case against Ofcom’s findings that he was more than a tad offensive in his interview with Cllr. Michael Stark. You can read an excerpt from the transcript here.
The former TalkSport presenter had teamed up with human rights campaigners Liberty to put forward a case that in censuring him, Ofcom had infringed his right to free speech.
That was dismissed today, but in the true spirit of spin, Liberty put out this press release. Here’s their view of what happened today:
Reviewing Ofcom’s decision, the High Court said today the word Nazi was “capable of being highly insulting” but that in context it “may be seen as an emphatic and pejorative assertion that Mr Stark was, in the matter of smoking and fostering children, one who imposes his views on others. It was not, in the context, a description of Mr Stark’s wider political or ideological position.”
Although the Court accepted that the language used by Mr Gaunt was ‘political speech’ and thus deserving of the highest level of protection under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, it found that Ofcom’s finding was justified because Mr Gaunt had “lost his rag” and the later part of the interview had become abusive shouting.
The original Ofcom ruling is here, and to be fair, it pretty much agrees with that to an extent.
It’s interesting, and this is more of an observation on society in general, how confining the scope of a term that’s really rather offensive to a particular topic puts it somehow on the right side of the offensiveness scale. You don’t often see that in the ‘politically correct’ society.
Strange thing, the English Language.
On another angle, as Carl Gardner points out, it was probably the correct ruling. Although it’s one that’s going to be challenged again.
