Ministers and MPs from all parts of the political spectrum condemned Extinction rebellion for blocking the delivery of newspapers across the UK on Saturday.
Four nationwide newspapers, including the sun and Daily maildisappeared from the shelves of some newsstands Saturday morning after more than 100 environmental protesters attacked the presses of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. on Friday night.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “A free press is vital to holding governments and other powerful institutions accountable on issues critical to our country’s future, including the fight against climate change. It is totally unacceptable to try to limit public access to news in this way. ”
Labor MP Dawn Butler tweeted “Extinction Rebellion Bravo” on Saturday morning but subsequently deleted it. The official Labor Party line that followed was: “A free press is vital to our democracy. People have the right to read the newspapers they want. Preventing their distribution and the printers from doing their job wrong. “
Protesters used trucks and bamboo scaffolds to block roads outside Newsprinters’ plant in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, near Liverpool, on Friday evening. Presses print the sun, Time, Sun Sunday and Sunday Times, as good as Daily telegraph and Sunday telegraphthen Daily mail and Mail on Sunday, and London Evening standard… Banners with the headlines “Free the Truth” and “5 Scammers Control Our News” were posted on the site.
By Saturday morning, police said they had arrested about 72 activists. Around midnight, the blockade of Glasgow was lifted without arrest.
Extinction Rebellion said in a statement that the action was aimed at destroying and exposing what it called a failure to adequately report the climate change emergency: “Our free press, society and democracy are under attack – with side of a failed government that constantly lies to us … Our leaders have allowed the majority of our media to be concentrated in the hands of five individuals with powerful vested interests and deep connections to the fossil fuel industries. We need a free press, but we don’t have it. They let us down. “
Former tabloid journalist Steve Toes said he joined the Broxbourne action to support “one day with much less misinformation, division and hatred.” Ace, who said he worked “for each of these newspapers for the past 25 years,” clutched his hand in a concrete pipe. “I feel that as a former insider, [these newspapers] we bear a huge responsibility for the fact that we are fed today, for the fact that we do not tell the public about what is really happening, ”he said. “If it’s not in the papers, people don’t worry about it, and if people don’t worry about it, there will be no pressure on the government to treat it like an emergency.”
But Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the action would be “ridiculous if it weren’t so big.”
“Everyone has the right to peacefully protest and make his voice heard: after all, this is a free press,” he said. “But for those who want only their voices to be heard, it is unacceptable to try to silence others.”
Representative of Guardian News & Media, parent company Observer, said: “We fully support the right to protest, but we do not condone any action that restricts the public’s right to access journalism and to buy any newspaper of their choice.”
While Extinction Rebellion enjoys significant support from David Attenborough, he said in Saturday’s article that breaking the law by environmental protesters was not “smart policy.” Attenborough, Britain’s most famous naturalist, praised the younger generation for their passion, but said, “I don’t think breaking the law is a smart policy. If you are even a little good, then some of your requirements will be met, and then you will require people to comply with these new laws. You cannot get both. “
But his article, which spoke of a climate emergency, may not have been widely disseminated – it was published in one of the newspapers targeted by the Extinction Rebellion campaign. the sun…
