© Getty ImagesGraham Phillips, journalist
'Freedom of speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence.'But the case of Graham Phillips, who was sanctioned by the British government last month, is one of the hardest I've ever had to wrestle with.
Phillips styles himself an 'independent journalist', but it's far from clear that the additional free-speech protections we apply to journalists should be extended to him. It would be more accurate to describe him as a pro-Russian propagandist. He's a British citizen who's been based in Ukraine, for the most part, since 2010, writing stories and making YouTube videos about football, prostitution, crime, politics and, most recently, Putin's invasion. There's no evidence he's a paid asset of the Russian state, but RT, the state-owned broadcaster, has employed him in the past and in 2015 he was awarded a medal by the Border Service, a branch of the FSB. The former cabinet minister Damian Green has described him as the modern equivalent of Lord Haw-Haw.
Comment: New Rules: Independent opinions on unapproved perspectives are now considered sanctionable offenses.