Wealthy and Westminster-ready student politicians at Oxford are successfully deploying legal threats to silence critical coverage in student media.
This is a phenomenon I saw first-hand when running one of the University of Oxford’s newspapers.
An attempt to report on electoral misconduct and vote tampering within one major political society resulted in a legal threat within twenty minutes of offering right of reply; reportage of harassment in another political society earned us a lawyer’s letter from their president.
No student outlet can afford to go to court against the likes of Carter-Ruck. Nor, most likely, can a student political society, unless someone has parents bankrolling it. It does seem that the students most conspicuously vying for a seat in the Commons, all too often wealthy, male presidents of political societies, are learning where the media’s jugular is.
An important precedent was laid down two years ago when an Oxford Union representative had a lavish birthday party quite long after his birthday and shortly before the Union elections. It was ruled in the Union’s internal tribunal that this constituted bribery and electoral malpractice. This lost him his position in the Union. Oxford student newspaper Cherwell tried to report on it, but their article was taaken down from the internet, despite the Union’s decision remaining fixed.
This rigmarole set the stage for a two-pronged legislative culture at Oxford: weaponise the law (against media) or weaponise bureaucracy (against political opponents). The Union’s bureaucracy upholstered by a lengthy and arcane rulebook.
One scandal after another, each matched by an internal, quasi-legal tribunal, has now threatened to sink the Oxford Union and a series of student articles chronicling these escapades have mysteriously vanished after short-lived publication.
I have also witnessed how formal complaints, once escalated to the bureaucratic palace of the Student Union, can hamper student journalism. On one side, clamorous bureaucratic disputes; on the other, silent threats to student outlets.
A wrong move documented in student media could derail a political career years down the line, making lawfare an understandable response for those students with the necessary resources. The internet’s unforgiving memory is stoking an Americanised, pre-professional culture within the university and, in turn, another American import: lawsuit culture.
The Higher Education Act 2023 protected free speech in UK universities, but student media is still bound by media law.
Perhaps the more newspapers are muzzled, the more guerrilla journalism will thrive. When an investigation into misogyny within a society was difficult to publish due to legal threats, it was leaked by an unknown member of an unknown committee on a student forum. No fact-checking, no institution with a reputation on the line, but rather a recourse to unaccountable, unusable student gossip.
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