This has already appeared on countless blogs, so I’m neither original nor providing breaking news. I’m hoping this link to what Philip Pullman wrote in the Times online the other day, is still working. If it’s not, call in on Julie Bertagna, who has another link to someone else. I believe that Philip published this, and then it was immediately taken off again, for whatever reason.
Bloggers everywhere searched for it and it was found (how?) and posted on their blogs.
More people should speak out.
The Occasional Bookwitch 
Well said. Although I’ve long had another similar concern which I think is equally serious, which Pullman doesn’t address here. Government is to be watched, yes… but at least it is accountable to some extent. It can at least be judged by actions and consequences.
My own bugbear is various elements of the media. The media is far less accountable. A newspaper can say anything and get away with it, usually. The media wields enormous indirect power because it can disseminate ‘memes’ with impunity. One egregious example was the MMR ‘controversy’, started by one errant scientist but stoked to crisis levels by one particular newspaper. This paper implied some ‘government conspiracy’ of the kind cited by Pullman above… when it fact it was simply the government trying to prevent children dying from measles. As a result of the misinformation campaign, many children have died from measles.
There we have it – an abuse of power, and quite unaccountable. I would like to see Pullman fulminate against such behaviour by the media, sometime.
I know, Nick. My intake of salt has gone up dramatically. Whenever I read the paper the pinches of salt get bigger and more frequent. Quite often the news people are simply stupid or ignorant, which is what you discover when they happen to deal with something you know a lot about. I then assume that the same happens with everything I don’t know anything about at all.
I was once taking a weekend away in Windermere during the Foot And Mouth crisis. We were surprised to find the place bustling, seemingly hardly affected in terms of visitor numbers. Our hotel was full. While there, we saw a news crew filming by the lake. We watched the report that evening…
…which showed an empty ferry boat (we knew that everyone had just got off it) and empty streets in Windermere (we knew it was early morning, because of the clear skies – it had clouded over later). And the news report bewailed the fact that the town was empty because of the crisis.
Lies! Pure lies and fabrication! They didn’t find what they came to find, so they rigged it. As you rightly say, this was one case where I knew the truth…
I was once asked to write a blog on Thomas the Tank Engine. It turned out it was a negative blog about dear Thomas that was wanted. I said I was a fan and couldn’t possibly. ‘Write from your point of view, then’ I was told. I did. It was never published. It would have been so amusing to sneer at Thomas and his fans and their parents.