Why I am writing about the rubbish on the internet and why I, a staunch supporter of free expression, fierce opponent to censorship and anti-regulations, can see the point of ( and empathise with) many of the  people who back a European court action to correct (good luck to them !!) information about them and their data  on the internet. What inspired me is personal experience. Only yesterday I discovered, that a young lady, close to my heart, had the WRONG information about my date of birth and my faith ( which caused some serious damage to our affectionate relationship- I hope we can repair), from some rubbish on the internet. The other reason, unfortunately, my fellow hacks and hacketts, seldom check information for accuracy. Equally in 2009 the Media Editor of the Independent newspaper, PUBLISHED a story about me when I resigned my post as Director of the Media monitoring organisation Just Journalism, and labelled me wrongly ( ethnically), he neither bothered to contact me, nor to check his own newspaper archives.. I worked for The Independent   since I joined when  it was founded  in 1986 and until 1998 ( and continued to write for the paper  until four years ago), and my personal information and files were  available in his newsdesk; instead of checking  facts he  ‘guessed’. This thought in my head also coincides with the row over google and correcting or deleting personal information. I sympathise with the people who scream for regulation,  although as an old fashioned hack and a staunch libertarian, I am the last person in the world who’d agree on censorship or some regulation blocking access to information. but my personal experience and what you can do when WRONG and confusing information is out there for the world to see and you are powerless to correct them? Continue reading →