Press anti-human rights campaign 'grotesque'

The right-wing press has conducted a "grotesque campaign" against the incorporation of the European convention on human rights into British law, argues Brunel University professor Julian Petley. In the latest issue of the magazine Ethical Space, he illustrates how newspapers have woven together "a number of highly potent ideological strands", including anti-Europeanism, a patriotic pride in the absence of a British constitution and an attachment to "firm government". He concludes: "Illiberal newspapers have... completely abandoned any responsibility to inform, preferring instead to mount a campaign of vilification and misinformation which... seems calculated to foment yet more of the social discord, division and disharmony which are now these papers' stock in trade." (Via Ethical Space)