The retreat of reason

It's fatally flawed, plays fast and loose with the facts but has an unquestioning and influential following

Smashed hits: Overview

Though its trials are less monitored and recorded, music is no less subject to censorship than other forms of artistic expression, and the methods are much the same. These run the usual gamut from killing or imprisonment to banning the works themselves, and thence into that nebulous domain in which 'taste' and market forces are the engines of restriction

New labour, old morality

Out of the swinging sixties, in with zero tolerance – Tony Blair’s crusade on values betrays a deep illiberalis

Is there a British film industry?

For the abstract, please see the PDF file

Nonsense on Stilts

Goverment and press have joined forces in a campaign to abandon the human rights act- and maybe membership of the E

An unsavoury business

Fear of libel actions and of losing advertising revenue has persuaded most media organisations to leave well alone when it comes to exposing some of the more unsavoury aspects of the burger giant McDonald's

A case of mistaken identity

What went wrong between the UK media and a report on 'multi-ethnic' Britain

Foxy business

When did diversity ever equal impartiality? It didn't, but it has become the cover for any kind of 'polemical' - aka biased - broadcasting

Fourth-rate estate

Was journalism ever the democratic watchdog and campion of freedom its advocates claim

Pornography, panopticism and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008

This is the accepted version of the following article: Petley, J. (2009), Pornography, Panopticism and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Sociology Compass, 3: 417–432, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751- 9020.2009.00212.x/abstract.In May 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act was passed in the United Kingdom. Among other things, this made it an offence even to possess what it describes as an ‘extreme pornographic image’. This paper analyses the particular factors which gave rise to this measure, support for it amongst the police and politicians, and the problems which are likely to arise from attempts to enforce it. In particular, the paper argues that the measure is so ill-conceived that it is likely to criminalise the possession of a far wider range of images than was originally intended. More generally, the paper examines the Act in the context of (a) the increasing tendency on the part of governments both democratic and non-democratic to attempt to regulate the Internet and its users; (b) the development of the ‘surveillance society’; and (c) New Labour's marked tendency to legislate for private and personal realms traditionally regarded as out-of-bounds in a democratic polity. The paper concludes that the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act is a disturbing symptom of the development of the United Kingdom as not simply a surveillance society but also a post-social democratic state