Peter Tatchell’s is – perhaps understandably – pissed off. The Press Complaints Commission has failed to uphold a complaint against Jan Moir’s despicable  attack on late boyzone star Stephen Gately. Yet he is wrong  to demand – along with many others -  that the PPC, a “discredited, feeble institution”  be “replaced by an independent statutory body with real power and principles”. For many it seems odd, even illogical, that the press should regulate itself, and that figures from the major papers should sit on the commission which deals with complaints against them. Yet if the press is to be regulated it should absolutely be voluntary self-regulation. You see, newspapers are not just another industry like gas or water. Government intereference with the railways does not threaten our democracy. If, like me, you are opposed to  censorship then there is no way you can demand that a external body with officially sanctioned powers be given the general right to haul papers over the coals for what they publish. And this unfortunately, is the implication not only of Tatchell’s comments, but those of many others who thoughtlessly assert that “self-regulation isn’t working”.

If there does seem to be something contradictory or illogical about the PCC, then this is a product of its fudged origins. While it was established, nominally, as a means of self-regulation, the reality was somewhat different. For free will was excersized at gun point:the Tory government of the early 1990s had threatened imminent government legislation if the press did not come up with a mechanism to regulate itself, and thus the PCC was born. Rather than simply following the logic of regulation, and complain that it “isn’t working” we ought to bear in mind the bigger question of whether in a democratic state, the papers should be punished for what they publish.

Ah, Twitter. That bite-sized break from ennui, that stream of consciousness, that tool of social mobilisation… but mobilisation to what?

Twitter has played an important part in the democratisation of politics – witness the Tweets of solidarity from Iran and the recent downfall of the Carter Ruck’s Trafigura injunction against The Guardian (which was also in no small part caused by The Third Estate and others).

Twitter has been hugely effective as a mass campaigning tool for organisations such as Climate Camp, Avaaz and Greenpeace. It gets petitions signed and it publicises worthy causes more quickly than ever before. There’s no doubt it’s a great tool for quickly disseminating information.

I enjoy Twitter. As a journalist, I sometimes get leads from Twitter. It has been mostly beneficial to my life. It could also be my downfall. At the risk of sounding like a total Luddite, Twitter has great potential for evil…

The great thing about Twitter is that it’s so ‘in the moment’ – this makes it both hugely entertaining and refreshingly un-spun. However, who hasn’t said things ‘in the moment’ that they have later regretted? Twitter could prove to be the ultimate tool for large-scale Chinese whispers. For Crucible-style mass hysteria and mob rule.

Labour’s newly crowned “Twitter tsar”, MP Kerry McCarthy, has already warned MP’s that what they say in haste can come back to haunt them. David Cameron has warned against the dangers of spouting rubbish in his own inimitable way (and if anyone should know…). The difference between Twitter and journalism of the kind that you get in a blog like this one or in a broadsheet newspaper is that it is generally considered commentary.

The mobilisation of the forces of Liberal anger against the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir is a warning sign. Personally, I believe Jan Moir’s article about the death of the Boyzone singer Stephen Gately was guilty of being both homophobic and incredibly insensitive. However, most of what the Daily Mail publishes is similarly offensive to me. So I don’t buy it and I don’t read it.

I did read Jan Moir’s article, I wonder how many of those who followed those links on Twitter direct to the PCC did the same? I wonder how many people read about the article on Twitter and made up their mind to complain without having seen what they were complaining about? It’s surprisingly easy to get worked up and carried away by being offended…

Seven years ago I had the pleasure of working in an extremely minor capacity on the early stages of Jerry Springer the Opera. The hate campaign that was swiftly mobilised against the production when it was later aired on the BBC was staggering. Nothing has the ability to offend people quite like comedy. What was interesting about the orchestrated mass complaints was that a very small minority of those complaining had actually seen the show. They had only heard about it. The information was disseminated with amazing effectiveness by the Christian Voice organisation (the scourge of comedians) and, thus ‘informed’ their members complained.

It’s insulting to say that because the average demographic of Twitter is young, urban and well educated this could not happen. You yourself are likely to fit all of these categories (or, like me, at least the ‘urban’ one) – how often have you allowed yourself to get all worked up about something without knowing all the facts? Now be honest. With Twitter, as in life, sometimes we should stop, count to ten and think before we pass things on.

(For the benefit of any new readers, FJM is explained here. But to be honest, it’s not very complicated. You’ll probably get the idea pretty quickly.)

It’s been a good week, both for the liberal left and for Twitter. First there was the whole Trafigura thing, which finally came to a decisive end yesterday evening, when the injunction on the Minton Report into the toxic waste dumping was lifted. This followed the lifting earlier in the week of the injunction against reporting a Parliamentary question mentioning it, which was what sparked off the whole thing. But before that came to an end, a whole new storm of outrage was brewing over Jan Moir’s egregiously offensive piece in Friday’s Mail, which, thanks once again to a campaign on Twitter, attracted a huge number of complaints and not a few derisory reactions from the rest of Fleet Street and the blogosphere. So a few hours later she decided to try and explain herself, in a manner wholly deserving of being FJM’d:

Some people, particularly in the gay community, have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately. This was never my intention. Stephen, as I pointed out in the article was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions.

Um, I really don’t think most people were upset because they thought you saw Gately as charmless or sour. But I suppose you can never be sure about these things.

However, the point of my column-which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read –

Hang on, you’re a columnist for the Daily Mail, and you’re claiming that the criticism you’re on the end of is nothing but an uninformed kneejerk reaction? This is truly special.

…was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all. Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately’s death – out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger – did not have a bearing on his death. At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition.

O…kay. First, you didn’t say that there were ‘unanswered questions’ about Gately’s death, you categorically stated that ‘Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one.’ So now you’re just lying, very clumsily. Second, you’ve already been taken apart by any number of people (see links above) for implying you magically know the circumstances of Gately’s death better than the qualified coroner who examined his body. Doing the same thing again really isn’t helping you.

The entire matter of his sudden death seemed to have been handled with undue haste when lessons could have been learned.

Ooh, what lessons might these be? Please enlighten us.

On this subject, one very important point.  When I wrote that ‘he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine’, I was referring to the drugs and the casual invitation extended  to a stranger. Not to the fact of his homosexuality.

Got that, kids? Drugs and casual sex might not have had anything to do with Gately’s death, but they’re still bad, mmmkay? I hear he didn’t always get his five fruit and veg a day either. Maybe his death could teach us a lesson about the importance of eating our greens?

In writing that ‘it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’ I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

Fair point. Of course, it would help if you could cite a single case of someone arguing that civil partnerships wouldn’t have the same problems that marriages do, since without that all you’ve got there is a pathetic straw man argument, but I suppose I’m quibbling over details here.

In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.

So…your grand finale is to insinuate that the protests about this article are some kind of gigantic conspiracy rather than the result of people actually being genuinely offended? Sterling job there. If for some reason you find yourself looking for work in the near future, maybe Carter Ruck’s PR department could hire you?