How the blogosphere vs Trafigura and Carter-Ruck unfolded

Trafigura and Carter Ruck trending on Twitter

At 8:30pm last night, an article entitled Guardian gagged from reporting parliament appeared on the newspaper’s website. Twelve hours later, Trafigura – a large but inconspicuous trader in oil and base metals – was on the lips of bloggers and tweeters everywhere along with Carter Ruck, their libel lawyers.

• Just before 10pm Guido reproduces the parliamentary question the Guardian had been blocked from printing, inviting Carter-Ruck to sue him in Nevis, where his blog is incorporated.
• With “British Press Banned From Reporting Parliament. Seriously“, The Spectator becomes the  first mainstream media outlet to print the question.
• The other big-boy right wing bloggers pile in, including Tory Bear with characteristic humour.
• Next Left’s brilliantly sarcastic post was presciently titled Carter-Ruck vs. the blogosphere.
• Scrapbook uncovered the select committee evidence that alerted Paul Farrelly, the MP who tabled the ‘unreportable question’, to Trafigura.

The story took off overnight on Twitter, thanks largely to a gargantuan effort by Morus, who deputises for Mike Smithson at Political Betting.

• While mainstream online news outlets wouldn’t touch the story, Alan Rusbridger tweeted at 9:49 am that the Guardian planned to challenge the Carter-Ruck in the High Court today.
• Left Foot Forward become the first site to pull together a cohesive analyisis and early narrative of the story.
• Mr Eugenides highlights the debacle as an example of the Streisland effect, where attempts to stifle a story backfire completely by generating yet more adverse publicity.
• Urgent questions are table by the Liberal Democrats in Parliament.
• At 12:53 Rusbridger announces – again via Twitter – that Carter-Ruck have backed down.

“One day these highly-remunerated libel lawyers are going to wake up and realise that they aren’t being paid in guineas any more and that, thanks to this thing called the Interwebs, they can’t shut down freedom of speech the way they used to in the old days.” – Mr Eugenides

The BBC, Channel 4 New et al should pick this up now.

This can’t happen again.

UPDATE: A few post-mortems around but The Daily Quail’s Carter-Ruck school of viral marketing is definitely the funniest.