Irish News’ Journalist in Secret Censorship Attempt

Voltaire is attributed with stating “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”  Whether those exact words expelled from his lips or not, it is the concise expression of the Enlightenment.  Freedom of thought and expression are the most cherished of human rights and as such hold a place of esteem in modern society.  Since the Fifth Century BC the spectre of censorship has prowled around those who believe in freedom of expression. The term was derived from the office of Censor, the individual who would enforce the collective form of morality and religion on the Roman world, any form of dissent was to be stamped out ruthlessly.  This would also be seen in the Grecian world where Socrates was sentenced to death for his failure to comply. Euripides would express his noble belief in freedom by stating, “Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace. What can be more just in a State than this?”

Even modern writers condemn the use of censorship. Shaw famously stated that a society with such precepts was stagnant and “the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”  Orwell would go further with his view on liberty, saying, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” We are a nation that has been taught to abhor censorship in all its forms especially when it comes to the media.  Every nation needs a media that is able to express itself without hindrance or threat.  That is what we have at least been taught to expect and what the media would itself espouse and defend. The most repugnant use of censorship is the secret type.  The secret injunction: that which tries to or prevents the reporting of the issue at hand.

These have become so prevalent in Northern Ireland that there are more here than in the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom. To understand the significance of that, the population figures have to be placed alongside the fact. Northern Ireland has a population of 1.8 million next to the UK figure of 62 million.  An area which consists of 2.9% of populace has more secret injunctions than 97% of the population.  This is a national disgrace and led the high profile barrister and TUV leader, Jim Allistair to state “The mystery and secrecy surrounding injunctive relief is generally not healthy, nor does it sit comfortably with the transparency expectations of a modern society.”  Indeed, in a supposed free and modern society should we have a secret censorship law that protects those just because of their wealth?  In Northern Ireland politicians guilty of the grosses hypocrisy and financial scandal have these facts hidden from the public.  Entertainment figures hide their obsession with children all because of the antiquated legal legislation that can be used to hide such facts.  All of this is bewailed by the media.

This being the case, it will come as a shock and total absurdity that the Ulster News received a secret censorship threat within the last week. Last Week we published an Article about the journalism of Irish News columnist, Alison Morris.  Miss Morris has taken exception at a number of terms used in the said article: “hypocrite”, “fantasy” and “OC”.  The correspondence also contained a falsehood and a sinister observation for which we will be seeking a public a apology.

We will deal with a number of issues raised by Miss Morris’ legal correspondence.

First, the issue of the secret nature of the correspondence itself.  At no time did we enter into any form of contract with Miss Morris or her legal team, nor is the correspondence the subject of any legal injunction not to publish, so we will publish it in its entirety.

Secondly, the issue of Miss Morris’ complaints:

1.      The use by Ulster News of the term “hypocritical bigot” to describe Miss Morris.  The Oxford English Dictionary states that hypocritical is “behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.” Miss Morris on the 3rd of August 2013, appeared in the Stubbs Gazette over her financial matters.  Within a number of weeks of her being hauled thought the courts, she was writing about people who were before the courts on financial issues. In the said article, she targets the individual due to his political beliefs and also makes a personal comment about the appearance of the defendant in the case, based on a rumour.  Due to the said facts we stand by the use of the initial adjectives in question.

2.     The use of the term “OC” to describe her editor is no different from the use of supremo or don to describe a boss.  Would Miss Morris claim we were implying she was a member of the mafia if we would had have used the term don?  We stand over the initial term.

3.      The use of the term “fantasy storytelling”:  Miss Morris authored an article in which she claimed that rockets capable of taking out a helicopter had been found in South Armagh. She also states that these had used technology from the Middle East.  This was not the case, these were simple homemade mortars, which can be seen from the photographs taken at the scene and the police assessment.  The claims of Middle Eastern connections were not true, yet Miss Morris published this as fact.

4.      Miss Morris’ legal team also makes the fictitious claim that Ulster News breached her privacy by publishing her address. At no time did we publish her address but stated that someone  with the name Alison Morris had appeared in the debtor’s mag Stubbs Gazette.  We published the name, region and amount owed but we redacted her address. In fact, her address was released by the Northern Ireland Court Service and appeared in Stubbs Gazette due to her non-payment of bills. Any issues with her address now being in the public domain should therefore be taken up with the said parties.

Ulster News looks on this as a cynical attempt by Miss Morris to silence us over the fact that we have exposed her as someone who has been through the courts because of financial  matters and is still using her position to write about others who have been embroiled in the same process. Is this not a conflict of interest?  The question also has to be asked: was her employer aware of this and if so why did they deem it fit for her to write on such matters?  That fact that Miss Morris would target the Ulster News with a secret censor attempt over remarks that come under fair comment, and also to use completely fictitious allegations in order to silence us, is unsavoury and sinister.  This placed next to the fact that she is a journalist makes it even more incredulous.  Journalists may one day be looking for help to overthrow such injunctions, how can they do so when they themselves have employed such tactics.

“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do”. Edmund Burke

The Sound of Silence: Piggy Morris and Vatican News

This week the Ulster News was investigating the hardship which has engulfed our society. As a whole, job losses, financial insecurity, the collapse of the housing market and the government stealth tax,  quantitative easing has had a dramatic effect on the average household. Beside all of the above, a time bomb is waiting to go off.  It relates to Self-Assessed Mortgages.  The mortgages were put into place by banks for those who were self-employed and whose income fluctuated.  But in the early 2000s those offering mortgages began to encourage people to use this form of mortgage to buy property. This would be ok if you could continue to make the payment scheme.  But it allowed people to buy property vastly exceeding their natural income. Those selling the mortgage told buyers not to worry, property was on the up, up and up. There would be no losers.  What many did not know was that by taking out these payment plans they were committing fraud – undetectable until financial difficulty came. Like the PPI fraud no banker or financial  adviser will face a court over this, just the poor sod whose dream has already became a nightmare.  This is the real tragedy that no media outlet will put under scrutiny – why? Although an aspect of this was to be covered in a very cynical way by the Irish News.

This week we had Allison Morris, called Piggy in Belfast’s journalistic circles, due to her uncanny resemblance to the strappy, stroppy Muppet celebrity, Miss Piggy, show her true colours once more. Miss Hypocrisy did her weekly banging of the orange drum; although rumour has it she’d bang anything for a story, so those at Twaddle shouldn’t feel that bad.  Piggy had been exposed as a hypocritical bigot who uses her position to expose rioters and online bullies – but not the behaviour of her love interest, who seems to revel in such.  Her love interest is quite infamous: for his impersonation of Jack Nicholson in the Shining. And also as someone who threatens people over the internet ad nauseum, without any consequences.  But his most nauseating personality trait is his online commentary about children – something that goes on while he is still employed as a so-called cross community worker, focusing on youth.

Piggy moved on to a good auld grunt about someone who had been caught beefing up his mortgage, you know the sort of thing that one hundred thousand people may be guilty of in Northern Ireland.  But Piggy and her OC ‘Borin’ Doran’ thought this was headline news and deserved a full page spread.  The true nature of the individual’s crime, in Piggy’s eyes, was laid out in the headline “Leading Loyalist Lied About Income to Obtain Mortgage”. The story was purely sectarian in its nature and any real news worthiness was nominal. It most certainly did not deserve full page coverage.  The total news value should be placed on how the judge presiding over the case dealt with the matter. He saw it as that serious the defendant was given the punitive sentence of two weeks community service. To understand Piggy’s gripe, put that next to the amount of people who received a similar sentence this week. I am sure there were hundreds. But there was no full page for them, no, maybe a line at most.

The fact that someone lost their home and found themselves in debt should be looked upon with empathy; no one would want to lose their home.  As for Piggy, I thought she would have sympathy with someone in those circumstances.  It was not that long ago she took to the web to convey the fact that she found herself in penurious times. But her protestation of the hard life as a single mum was soon exposed as a shameful sham. The same week saw her living it up and she had only used the claim while avoiding attending an NUJ appeal, which let’s just say, didn’t go Piggy’s way.  At the same time Piggy Morris was finding it so hard to survive on the wage she receives from the Irish News she was enjoying a class hotel and, it seems, the time of her life. In fact, she couldn’t wait to share the fact with her adoring fans, who were by this time somewhat perplexed by the desultory and contradictory ravings coming from Bacon Bake.

All of this brings us to the present and to some findings that Ulster News came across while investigating the currents trends in the debt crisis.  It has come to our attention that an individual with the name Allison Morris is currently listed in the current issue of the debtor’s mag, Stubbs Gazette.  It states:

Morris Alison, (redacted) Crumlin. County Antrim.

Plaintiff, R. Stanley Laird &Sons Estate Agents

…… ……… £755.00.            2^nd , August 2013.

Ulster News tried on a number of occasions to contact Miss Morris concerning the fact that someone with the same name had appeared in the Stubbs Gazette, and had county court judgements against them. Despite contacting her work email address and telephoning the Irish News, Miss Morris was not available and did not respond to our emails.  We will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions to this echoing Sound of Silence.  

Piggy ended the week by donning her mantle as chief security correspondent.  What an entrance she made.  Her insight and ground-breaking work sent western intelligence services into a tizzy. Even with the constant monitoring that MI6, MI5, Mossad and the CIA have in place, well it was no match for Piggy’s cohorts. They knew what was really going on.  Strafor and Janes were ready to ship out reporters,  how could they have over looked the scope of the century: “Hezbollah in South Armagh.”

Almost panic ensued, teapots, coffeepots and telephones clinkered.  The housewives dreaded what might be next. Would they be forced to wear the burka at Crossmaglen Market on a Friday?  Had Hezbollah forsaken the Bekaa Valley for the hawthorn-lined lanes of South Armagh, Surely not? But it must be true, it was in the Irish News. Locals looked at strangers with suspicion and the thoughts, what would he look like in a turban?  There were frantic searches for lorry laden rocket systems, which Piggy promise could take out a helicopter.  Northern Ireland had not seen such panic since it found out Jeffrey Donaldson went on weekend retreats to a Disney fan club.

Piggy Morris’s story would have made Stephen Glass blush.  Middle Eastern rockets aimed at police helicopters.  It was like a bad take on a cheap novel.  It was that bad Twitter was awash with those challenging Piggy’s account.  One person telling her to “go and look up Wikipedia”.  She reacted by saying, “Wikipedia was an unreliable source”.  All I can say is on this issue it is a lot more reliable than her or the Irish News.  The Irish Independent gave a different account of the said incident and anyone wanting to know the truth should read it.  One ATO told the Ulster News Piggy’s claims were ludicrous.  These were nothing more than “PIRA  mark 12 mortars and the only way  that they would have had contact with a helicopter is if the pilot inadvertently landed on it.”

At one time I would have read the Irish News; it covered a lot more than the NIO news sheets that offer the other sources of daily news in Belfast.  I did not agree with the editorial content but it offered comprehensive news coverage. This is no longer the case.  It has, with the input of Morris and her ilk, become a laughing stock.  When a paper ceases to inform, challenge and enlighten its readership it is no longer worth the paper it is written on.  This is the case with the Irish News and its further descent in to the surreal world of Piggy Morris and fantasy storytelling.  When I read her work I feel like a Smash alien robot.   This is a testament to the true state on journalism in Belfast

I would say don’t give up the day job Piggy, but maybe that’s not the best advice. ‘For Mash choose Smash‘.