UnNews:UK Government to run media
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| UK Government to run media | 
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22 May 2015
LONDON, Oceania -- Home Secretary Teresa May has tasked Ofcom with vetting all media, including television and radio, before it releases material to the public. The institutional transformation aims to prevent “extremism”, in a bid to remove any unhealthy relationship between Government, mainstream media and the police, and bury potential future back-handers-for-stories scandals.
The Home Secretary said in her announcement: "Ofcom is now known as the Ministry Of Information and will vet all media before it is released to the public. Think of it as your Big Sister, protecting you from corruption.... sorry, being corrupted."
May stated the Ministry Of Information’s main role is to prevent transmission of “extreme content” — a mission statement as broad as it is long, can include exposés of bribery and corruption between politicians, police, and hacks. It also might be “extreme” to cover those in high office whose hands are either in the public purse or all over their cute secretary. The Ministry is also tasked with controlling “slightly dodgy content,” such as misappropriation of personal data and profile gathering.
Ofcom previously had powers to prosecute content for religious extremism and managed to walk the tightrope between that mission and freedom of expression and privacy laws, by falling off a lot. However, reflecting the national consensus that prevention is more efficient than reaction, the new Ministry will be able to take pre-emptive action, suppressing material long before it becomes necessary to control it. It will be a huge bureaucratic rug under which much may be swept.
May assured the public that exposés of public corruption between civil servants and the press will continue to be covered by the existing law, with which everyone is familiar, except civil servants and the press. They will continue to pursue getting the right “story” (and trousering beer money), regardless of whether it is legitimate, in the public interest, or legal.
Now that the Ministry Of Information is fully established, May has proposed to the Prime Minister that it might be possible to shut both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, in favour of a Ministry of Law. The Ministry of Law would eventually merge into Ministry of Information, calling it the Ministry of Lawformation; finally closing the loop on any corruption and information processing that would be interpreted by the public, and the Judiciary, as illegal, and no more "lessons" would need to be learned.
May is also introducing the Political Officer, a concept dreamt up in the Soviet Union and rebooted in the U.S. when its Federal Communications Commission proposed “embedding” interns in network newsrooms and Barack Obama called for the U.S. to “change how the media reports.” May said that the heavily armed Political Officers will "monitor movements and gather data for security. They will immediately react with full force to extremist-motivated action; even when merely “contemplated” and long before it is tweeted. The PC PO and the PC PC will flush society of feral murderers, gypos, and perhaps typos. The reform will also protect us against follow-on reformers.”
Sources[edit]
- Ian Johnston "Theresa May accused of seeking to introduce state censorship of the media by Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid". Independent, May 22, 2015
- "Obama call to change ‘how the media reports’ raises concerns". Fox News, May 13, 2015