PIERS
MORGAN: Ofcom's vindication of me is a resounding victory for freedom of speech
and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios who think we should all be
compelled to believe every fork-tongued word they say – now, do I get my GMB
job back?
He could have been
talking about Prince
Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, two people who think they have both
the right to drop endless incendiary unsubstantiated bombshells about their
family AND the right to censor and silence anyone who dares to disbelieve or
challenge them.
Back in March, the
Duke and Duchess
of Sussex spent two hours spray-gunning the Royals to Oprah
Winfrey in an explosive interview on prime-time
They claimed a member
of the Royal
Family had been racist about their son Archie, and that their little
boy had been banned from being a Prince because of his skin colour.
Hours later on GMB, Piers
said he didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said triggering furious protest
from her fans of the couple. Today OFCOM announced that they had rejected all
the complaints against Piers
Meghan also claimed
that she told several senior Palace officials she was feeling suicidal, but
they told her she couldn't have any treatment because it would be bad for the
royal brand.
Oh, and she stated
as fact that she and Harry secretly got married three days before their
official wedding, in a private ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
On ITV's Good Morning Britain a few hours later, I said I didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said.
But it was simpler
than that: I just didn't believe her.
Not least because it
was immediately established that some of her more outlandish claims, like the
secret wedding and Archie's princely ban, were provable nonsense.
As the furore grew,
a record number of 57,000 people, including Meghan Markle herself, complained
about me to the UK TV government regulator OFCOM.
ITV's Chief
Executive, Dame Carolyn McCall, responded by saying that she believed Meghan's
mental health claims, and I was then told by my employers to either apologise
for what I had said or leave the show with immediate effect.
I decided to leave.
As I explained in an
article for the Mail on Sunday several weeks later: 'I wasn't going to apologise
for disbelieving Meghan Markle, because the truth is that I don't believe
Meghan Markle. And in a free democratic society, I should be allowed not to
believe someone, and to say that I don't believe them. That, surely, is the
very essence of freedom of speech? If I said I now believed Meghan, I would be
lying to the audience, the very thing I've accused her of doing.'
Today, in a stunning
verdict, OFCOM announced that they agreed with this argument, and rejected
every single complaint against me.
Their report is
lengthy and detailed, but in the end, it came down to an unequivocal and
emphatic endorsement of my right to an opinion.
'OFCOM is clear
that, consistent with freedom of expression, Mr Morgan was entitled to say he
disbelieved the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's allegations and to hold and
express strong views that rigorously challenged their account,' they declared,
adding that their Broadcasting Code 'allows for individuals to express strongly
held and robustly argued views, including those that are potentially harmful or
highly offensive, and for broadcasters to include these in their programming.'
It concluded: 'The
restriction of such views would, in our view, be an unwarranted and chilling
restriction on freedom of expression both of the broadcaster and the audience.'
Ironically, I would
imagine that word will prompt a very chilly reaction from the self-satisfied
Make no mistake,
this is a watershed moment in the battle for free speech.
If OFCOM had found
against me, that would have signalled the end of every UK TV journalist's right
to express any honestly held opinion on air lest it upset the likes of Meghan
Markle.
The whole point of
journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures,
particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them?
Five months on from
my sudden departure from GMB, at least 17 of Meghan and Harry's claims in the
Oprah interview have now been shown to be false or disingenuous.
The whole point of
journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures,
particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them? writes
Piers
The poor old
Archbishop of Canterbury was even forced to publicly deny he'd conducted a
secret marriage ceremony because that would have been a criminal offence and he
might have been sent to prison for it.
More pertinently, none of the couple's most sensational and damaging statements about racism and mental health have yet been supported by a shred of evidence amid furious denials from the Royal Family.
But that's not
really the point.
This is not about
me, or Meghan Markle.
It's about free
speech and the right to have an opinion.
We now live in a
woke-ravaged era where it's become a punishable offence to say what you really
think about almost anything for fear that someone, somewhere, will be offended.
This insidious
'cancel culture' as it's been termed represents the most serious threat to
democracy in my lifetime.
People all over the world are being shamed, vilified, and even fired from their jobs for expressing an opinion that the woke brigade don't like.
This was a man who
fought off the freedom-muzzling Nazis, for God's sake!
Yet now people
calling themselves 'liberal' are behaving like the worst kind of fascists.
That's why this
OFCOM ruling matters so much.
It was preposterous
that I had to leave a job I loved because I didn't believe a demonstrable liar.
But it happened
because the corporate world has been cowed into surrendering to the woke mob
whenever it bays for blood.
I was reliably
informed recently that Meghan Markle wrote directly to my ITV boss Dame Carolyn
McCall the night before I was forced out, demanding my head on a plate.
Apparently, she
stressed that she was writing to Dame Carolyn personally because they were both
women and mothers – a nauseating playing of the gender and maternity card if
ever there was one.
What has the world
come to when a whiny fork-tongued actress can dictate who presents a morning
television news programme?
So yes, I'm
obviously delighted that OFCOM has supported my right to disbelieve the
Sussexes' lurid claims against the Royal Family, many of which have failed to
stand up to even a scintilla of basic scrutiny of the kind that a woefully
enabling Oprah should have conducted.
This is a resounding
victory for free speech and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios.
And when Meghan and
Harry, whose unofficially authorised biography is titled 'Finding Freedom',
lick their failed censorship wounds today, I suggest they heed the words of
George Orwell: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell
people what they do not want to hear.'
Just one question remains: does this mean I get my job back?
