You can't ban the blog

One Scottish local authority has tonight been left with egg all over its face. Argyll and Bute's attempts to censor a 9 year old blogging about her school dinners backfired spectacularly when they were forced to very publicly retract their original decision. The gagging order was imposed on Martha Payne, a primary school girl who attends Lochgilphead Primary School, because she took pictures of her school dinners and then rated them out of 10 on her blog. Although Martha was writing the blog to raise money for charity, and was glowing with praise about some of her dinners, the council decided that not all publicity was good publicity and instructed her head teacher to order her not to take any more photographs of her lunches. The Argyll and Bute council officials thought that newspaper coverage of the 9 year old's blog was causing catering staff to fear for their jobs. But the council backed down due to pressure from the public, ith support from celebrity TV chefs Nick Nairn and Jamie Oliver on Twitter and over the traditional media. The council admitted its mistake and through gritted teeth, a spokesman gave several TV and radio interviews to clarify their position.

Needless to say, the adverse publicity attracted by the council over their reactionary initial decision has reflected positively on Martha's blog, NeverSeconds, which is now receiving thousands of views and dozens of comments each hour. The blog has already amassed over 3 million hits.

The wider issue here is that free speech has many forms, and even children are able to speak out. Primary children such as Martha Payne are able to voice their opinions and gain huge audiences for their writing over the web. They are armed with cameras and mobile phones and they know exactly how to use them. Anyone who underestimates the power of blogging and other forms of social media therefore does so at their peril. And as Argyll and Bute council discovered the hard way yesterday, it is foolish to try to stop children from expressing their ideas publicly. Their decision blew up in their faces, and their only comfort is that Martha's blog has grown in the light of their inadvertent publicity of her work, and is earning even more money for her chosen charity. Go Martha!

Image by Freefoto


You can't ban the blog by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.