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February 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TV personality, activist, and social media comedian Stephen Fry has taken sides in the Paul Chambers “Twitter Joke Trial,” saying that British judges fundamentally don’t understand how Twitter works.
Fry’s stance is more interesting for the larger question it raises about the rising role of social media and the generation gap between users of social networks and those asked to adjudicate them.
[More from Mashable: 5 Essential Spreadsheets for Social Media Analytics]
Chambers was arrested for a tweet he sent about Robin Hood Airport in England in January 2010. The airport suffered repeated service delays and disruptions due to cold weather, prompting Chambers to tweet:
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
[More from Mashable: Twitter to Get First Look at Several New York Fashion Week Collections]
Chambers was later convicted for sending a “message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” under the Communications Act 2003, causing him to lose his job, gain a criminal record and a mountain of fees and legal costs. Chambers lost several appeals and is awaiting his latest appeal, due this month.
Fry has publicly stood behind Chambers saying the verdict was unfair and even helping Chambers with his continuing legal costs. The real problem, according to Fry, is that British Judges are simply too out of touch with modern social tools such as Twitter. This is what Fry said in a recent interview:
“It was so clearly a joke, so clearly just a frustrated person going “Oh, damn.” It’s like me saying “I’ll kill my wife if she’s late again.” It’s that. It’s as simple that. And I’m afraid there’s a generation of judges and a generation of people at the Crown Prosecution Service that just don’t get Twitter, that just don’t get social media, who don’t understand that it’s part of a conversation.”
Saying you’re going to blow up an airport is clearly not a good idea, even if in jest, but the court’s reaction has been labelled unfair and disproportionate to the “crime” committed.
Fry’s interview, appearing on the BBC’s Newsbeat, addresses problems beyond just Chambers’ appeal. Similar questions were raised during the SOPA and PIPA debates when legislators and members of the government admitted ignorance at the nitty gritty of the bills they were trying to pass.
Fry’s allegations are even more topical now that the U.K. Supreme Court has joined Twitter (@UKSupremeCourt) this past month, joining the Judiciary of England and Wales at @judiciaryuk.
Should judges and authorities go through social media training or has Fry overstepped his mark? Let us know in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Beinecke Library
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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