United Kingdom
Gag order liftedPosted Oct 28 2009
On Oct. 12, a judge issued an injunction preventing the U.K.’s The Guardian from reporting about a question a parliamentarian would ask in the House of Commons later that week. The question was essentially about another injunction that prevents The Guardian from reporting about supposed toxic waste dumping by Trafigura, a multinational corporation, in the Ivory Coast.
As The New York Times points out, the newspaper “was forbidden to report that it had been gagged.”
The Guardian wrote a cryptic article discussing what they couldn’t discuss and stating that they couldn’t report “parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.”
The gag order was lifted the following day.