No-one has circumscribed Ms Pearson’s free speech. Nor have all too many of those speaking in support of her bothered to find out what this is all about. One might have thought that all those so-called journalists would have made that their first priority, but that thought would have been misplaced: that’s not how our free and fearless press operates these days.
So what did happen to cause Essex Police to rock up on Ms Pearson’s doorstep? Ah well. It was left to the Guardian to lay out some of those inconvenient things called facts. “Daily Telegraph readers have woken up this week to successive front-page headlines alleging a grave threat to free speech, triggered by a star columnist’s ‘Kafkaesque’ encounter with police”.
Do go on. “The rightwing broadsheet described how Essex police had told Allison Pearson on her doorstep last weekend that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a tweet last year. The Telegraph and Pearson say they are unaware which post caused two officers to knock on her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday”.
They’re aware now. “It is an alleged retweet by Pearson of a photograph posted several months ago amid heightened tensions over the policing of Gaza protests. It shows a group of people of colour posing with a flag on a British street, flanked by three police officers”. There is more.
And yet more. “The implication that the Muslims pictured are antisemitic and supporting Hamas is undermined by the green and maroon flag they are holding. The flag is used by supporters of the Pakistani political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). It also, rather clearly, has the word ‘Pakistan’ written on it”. Ms Pearson eventually deleted the Tweet.
So let’s summarise. She claimed it was the Met. She was wrong. She claimed that those depicted were “Jew Haters”. She was wrong. Moreover, as the complainant pointed out, “Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different”.
But, as the Guardian points out, “The Telegraph and Pearson castigated police and said the visit was an affront to free speech and freedom of the press. Their disbelief was shared by senior lawyers, the former Telegraph journalist Boris Johnson and other leading Conservatives, as well as Elon Musk”. Bozo and Muskrat. Who can’t bother checking their facts first.
At no time has Allison Pearson had her right to free speech curtailed or otherwise restricted. What she and her pals at the Tel have now discovered is that actions can have consequences, even in the asymmetric world of the media elite, who are all too used to shitting on the little people and getting away with it. This time they got a nasty shock. A shock called reality.
Ms Pearson might just think twice next time. So might her supporters.
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