Did you know the Council of Europe has a body to defend freedom of speech?
Neither did I.
The UK government has been formally warned for threatening press freedom after it blacklisted a group of investigative journalists and denied them access to information.
The Council of Europe issued the Level 2 “media freedom alert” after Ministry of Defence press officers refused to deal with Declassified UK, a website focusing on foreign and defence policy stories.
The intervention by the Council ironically comes as Boris Johnson and his ministers condemned environmental activists as a threat to press freedom for blockading printing plants in protest at newspapers’ climate coverage.
Britain has been a founding member of the Council of Europe since it was set up in 1949 under the Treaty of London. It monitors human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe and is responsible for overseeing the European Convention of Human Rights.
The organisation’s media freedom alert system catalogues threats to media freedom such as attacks on the physical safety of journalists, harassment and intimidation, detention and imprisonment.
Great job, Council of Europe.
Now, let’s get an alert on all the people in prison for “hate speech” and “Holocaust denial,” huh?
I mean, if we believe in free speech, we believe in free speech, right?
As in, we believe “a society with open and free access to information leads to ideal outcomes,” right?
As in, we should also be demanding an end to the Jewish censorship regime of the tech companies – right???