When the paper's staff needed protection the Act was good enough for them
Today the Sun came out guns blazing for a repeal of the Human Rights Act.
Its front page yells:
“EUROPEAN COURT PUTS TERRORISTS & MURDERERS FIRST. WHY IS CAMERON DITHERING OVER ENDING THIS FARCE?”
(It’s not a European Court, but never mind for now.)
The paper’s leader column says: ‘We should no longer be at the mercy of this nonsense’.
It claims the Act has been used to defend the rights of rapists, killers, terrorists and paedophiles, and to let their rights ‘trump’ those of ordinary people.
But it left out a salient category of person in its list: Sun journalists.
When the paper’s staff were investigated for various acts of wrongdoing, the paper sought protection of the very act in now seeks to scrap for everyone else.
Last October a spokesman for the paper said:
“The Sun is using the Human Rights Act in our submission to the Investigative Powers Tribunal as it is the primary source on which to base our petition under the law as it is now.”
Perhaps a new Bill of Rights written by Michael Gove or whomever it turns out to be will be more agreeable to the Sun editorial (and legal) team.
But until that bright new day dawns, the paper should recall that when it needed to defend its reporters from the state, it found the hated act and the idea of ‘human rights’ for everyone (not just people we like) a crucial and effective protection.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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One Response to “The Sun wants to scrap the Human Rights Act…after using it to defend its reporters”
Jon Danzig
I hope that the Conservative government does not abandon the peacetime legacy of their greatest leader, Winston Churchill. Read my blog for British Influence: ‘Britain’s human rights law: endorsed by Churchill, written by British lawyers, adopted by 47 European countries’:
http://www.britishinfluence.org/britain_s_human_rights_law