Saturday 25 February 2012

The media is spreading Chris Grayling misinformation

On the Today program yesterday Chris Grayling said:

What’s happened in the last week is we’ve got a lot of companies who are very jumpy. They are under pressure from a big internet campaign that is being run by an organisation that is a front for the Socialist Workers Party. Now the high street retail sector is going through a rough time at the moment, if you are running a company and you are getting strings of emails attacking you, it is very unsettling. It’s a false campaign. Let me give you an example, my own email address was hacked by this organisation and used to lodge a complaint with Tesco so I don’t accept that the scale of the campaign is very large, it is a small number of activists who are deliberately targeting these companies and trying to destabilise them.

Later the Today twitter account posted a correction:

Clarification (1/2)- earlier Chris Grayling suggested a group he described as "a front for the Socialist Workers Party" had hacked his email

Clarification (2/2) Grayling has since told us his email was not hacked but his email address was used on a complaint lodged with Tesco.

Do you want to guess which is getting more coverage the accusation or the retraction?
I am not arrogant enough to think that he was talking about me and my little part in one of the many online campaigns against workfare. Those that know me are well aware that I am a shill for nobody and have expressed myself against "hacking" phones and emails. I just worry that those that don't know me and a) have seen that I am campaigning against workfare; and b) have seen the reports of the minister's remarks; may put two and two together and get five.
Given that off air Mr. Grayling corrected the impression he had been "hacked" I would have hoped that more news outlets would have reported that as well. But that is just my inner ridiculous optimist as such levels of news integrity are not even dreamt in most parts of this sector in the UK.

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