Rageh Omaar was never supposed to be a journalist. Having immigrated to the UK from Somalia aged 5; he was destined to get a good education and train in a profession. Yet, as he stood before the Oxford University History Society on 30th May he was the picture of a successful and talented foreign correspondent. A man whose years showed only in his knowledge, he was hopeful, charismatic and radiated excitement.

Omaar read history at New College before graduating in 1991, and spoke passionately about the role that history had to play in the rest of his life, arguing that “history is enriching in its own right” as well as improving his understanding of the nations and situations on which he would eventually report. Omaar began his career as a freelance journalist for the BBC, but made a controversial move to Al Jazeera English in 2006. He had much to say about the BBC, criticising its lack of confidence following the Hutton affair and the lack of freedom granted to its senior journalists.

A broadcasting corporation dedicated to neutral journalism in an age where “the notion of journalistic neutrality is paper-thin”, Omaar discarded criticisms that the BBC’s ethos is strongly biased: “it is too big as an organisation to have a central ideology”. Omaar went on to state instead that each individual programme is known for its own identity and priorities. He recounted watching a crew enter a press conference: “when asked if they were from the BBC they said “No, we’re from Newsnight””. The BBC’s main issue is not its ethos or an ideological bias but its identity as a predominantly middle-class and newly self-conscious organisation.

Al Jazeera was less of an old-boys club. In fact, when it was created it was ground-breaking. Denying rumours that the station had ever broadcast unsuitable material, Omaar argued that its creation was “like a sort of rock through the glass house”. The station, which was created out of the ashes of BBC Arabic, represented a freedom of the broadcast media which had not been seen before in the Arab world. Omaar recounted the first time he had seen the channel: “I nearly fell off my chair when I saw an Israeli officer being interviewed”.

The conversation quickly turned from the established media to the role of social media particularly within the Arab Spring. A former BBC Middle East Correspondent and the creator of monthly investigative reports focussing on the area, Omaar seemed optimistic about the prospects for North East Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring remains “very hopeful, very positive and very moving”. Omaar acknowledged that after over 30 years of domination by single parties or individual people, their downfall “is always going to create a vacuum” and “vacuums will always be messy”, reminding us that it was unwise to predict the sweeping dominance of democracy in the region.

However, he remained positive about the impact of the movement: “Don’t lose sight of the huge psychological impact of the Arab Spring”. The “sheer courage it takes to hold a demo in Syria” and to protest throughout Tunisia is remarkable and has led to a change in the self-consciousness of the region and its leaders. Although there may be turmoil now, one thing which will remain with whichever leaders come to power is the newly established truth that there is “nothing you can do to control people intent on broadcasting their plight”. With this, new leaders will now have to accept and continually acknowledge the need to treat citizens with fairness or else “they might get me out”. It will forever be known that the people have “lost their fear”.

Omaar held in high regard the social networks and media which had enabled the Arab Spring to take place. “Of course, social media can exaggerate things”, he conceded, but what usually remains in the public mind is the important images, like Neda Agha-Soltan, an Iranian woman who was killed during the turmoil surrounding the 2009 Iranian elections, or Mohammed Zizzi, the Tunisian fruit-seller who burnt himself alive in Tunisia in December 2010 and could be said to have begun the movement. “The social media is part of the real-time news” and it is, “on the whole, a positive force”. “In Tunisia particularly the social media was essential”, however it is its ability to cross borders and allow individuals to identify with each other which is truly astounding. For the Arab people, videos posted on the internet of protests and oppression are powerful: “on websites in your own language, whether in Tunisia or the Lebanon, you can see your own life”. The social media allowed the Arabic people to “identify” with each other.

Although the international media has been attracted to Northern Africa by the Arab Spring, it seems a fair judgement that the continent as a whole seems to lack the media attention that it deserves: “in Africa it is always difficult to get enough coverage”. When I asked about the coverage of the Ivory Coast in particular, Omaar responded that the violence in the region had represented “elements and issues that go beyond Francophone and Anglophone reporting”. Although the Financial Times had covered the area well, this had not extended across the media simply because the issues raised were not those which our societies grasped. What was essentially a struggle to ensure that power was removed from an electorally defeated incumbent president, his ideology and his followers, was lost to the Anglophone media.

The attention turned to Somalia. The nation of Omaar’s birth, Somalia continues to be wracked by civil war and discontent. The issue which emerges from this region to touch the international community is that of piracy. This issue is “incredibly serious” and yet is not showing any long term improvement. There simply “hasn’t been a concerted approach that recognises the situation”. A long term solution would rest on land and with the Somali government. Although this seems impossible to achieve Omaar maintains that it could be done. However, as the Somali government continue “failing to give confidence to international partners”, NATO is left in an uncomfortable position of having to take action to patrol the area by boat and intervene in pirate activities. Once the Somali government can prove to the international community that a long term ground-based effort to remove piracy from its waters is going ahead, perhaps the situation will change.

Before our conversation ended we returned to the role of the media in conflicts across the world, and particularly its role in showing conflicts to viewers in the UK. Omaar was disparaging of the dominance of 24 hour news, which he claimed “on any channel is an echo chamber”. He spoke of one general in Iraq who was given instructions by Alastair Campbell to simply “keep it moving” in the media. This led to the issuing of statements which rumoured Basrah to have fallen a total of 17 times before it actually did. This form of media, he claimed, “is very easy to manipulate”.

Finally, our conversation turned away from the stories of conflict and hopes for progress to those who told them. Being a war correspondent is, almost by definition of the task, “very frightening”. However, Omaar reminded us of the beauty as well as the fear which is experienced within the job. War correspondents are “in a very privileged position being able to not only see but describe the rough draft of history”. They “see the best as well as the worst of human nature”, they see people “in situations you could barely imagine and transcend that”. Further, there is an awareness and choice in this career move: “No one should, or on some level does, hide from themselves that very bad things happen in that environment, as well as wonderful things”.

Rageh Omaar was never supposed to be a journalist. Yet as he stood before us, talking passionately, openly and frankly about the issues which affected the Arabic, African and British people alike, as he criticised his profession and measured its impact, as he held up the power of alternative forms of the media, it seemed clear he could have been nothing else.

The media loves a success story, especially if the protagonist is still a child. Those who become the youngest to achieve something or show exceptional promise, are often the focus of endless news coverage and are catapulted into the public eye. Too often though, in a desire to laud those young people who seemingly have pushed the boundaries of human capability, the potential negative effects of such achievements are ignored.

The case of George Atkinson, who recently became the youngest person to climb the highest peak on every continent at just sixteen, is a case in point. Questions that should be asked, about the motivations behind such a climb and the risks involved, have largely been neglected.

To complete the challenge George had to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It is a mountain where for every ten successful attempts, on average one climber will die. Indeed some of the world’s most experienced mountaineers have perished on its slopes. While it seems probable that every step was taken to ensure George’s safety, I imagine few parents would be comfortable letting a sixteen year old tackle such a dangerous and unforgiving challenge. In order to achieve ‘youngest ever’ records or when confronted by exceptionally gifted children, parents often let their common sense take a back seat.

A further problem is that it is extremely hard to know whether children are being forced into things by their parents; whether in effect they are merely participating in their parents’ dreams. George Atkinson climbed the first of his seven peaks aged just eleven, clearly it is unlikely that he was the one instigating that first climb. Indeed he was probably pliantly following his parents’ wishes for the first few of his seven ascents. The role of parents in such young achievers’ stories is an extremely vexing one. Often the line between encouraging a child’s passion, coercion and negligence is an extremely fine one. It is an issue that perhaps came to a head with the case of Laura Dekker, a thirteen year old Dutch girl, who wanted to sail around the world in 2009.

Laura, a keen and experienced sailor, was eager to make the trip and her parents were happy to let her, having encouraged her passion for sailing from an early age. The Dutch courts ruled that she was incapable of making such a voyage and that it would be irresponsible for her to be allowed to sail around the world alone. Dekker was placed into care for two months while her state of mind was assessed, though she later returned to live with her family. By implication the court ruled that Laura’s parents had been negligent. It is a problem that all parents of those who attempt to, or do achieve, great physical accomplishments when they are young have to ultimately face. Extraordinary children often pose their parents extraordinary conundrums that are rarely satisfactorily resolved. The problems ‘Too Much Too Young’ can pose however are not confined to physical feats of exertion. One only has to think of the numerous child actors who have either failed to make the grade in the long term or fell into a life of drink and drug abuse. Closer to home, those who over achieve far beyond their age group academically often face significant problems due to their preciousness. The story of Sufiah Yusef, who won a place to St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, at just thirteen, provides an interesting insight into the extraordinary pressure many academic prodigies are placed under. She was raised in an extremely intense academic environment where her father tutored her and her two siblings and so later ran away from Oxford, no longer able to take the continued academic expectations of her parents. Later it emerged that Sulfiah, now in her twenties, was working as a prostitute, probably in no small part due to the psychological breakdown that her academic gifts and uncompromising upbringing had led too.

Not every child prodigy though is unable to cope with the demands placed on them by university. One only has to think of Ruth Lawrence, who came to Oxford at the age of twelve and remains a successful mathematician. Or perhaps most impressively, the brilliant career William Pitt the Younger went on enjoy, after coming up to Cambridge aged fourteen. However those who come to university when they are much younger than their peers miss out on essential parts of the university experience. It is often hard for them to relate to, or be taken seriously by, their peers and obviously they cannot participate in many of the things that most students take for granted. Students under eighteen will not be able to share the common experiences during Freshers’ Week that are vital to making friends, a vital support network for any student. This is not, for the most part, conducive to an enjoyable, rounded or positive university experience.

Perhaps the most tragic result of these children’s preciousness however is that they lose out on what might be termed a normal, happy and fulfilling childhood. Often they are cut off from their peers for months on end, perhaps educated at home, and any friendships they do make remain transient. Relationships with their parents can also be distorted, as parents put pressure on them and forget more than anything else that these talented and capable children need support. We should celebrate those who achieve extraordinary things while young but never lose sight of the complicated ethical and moral questions that these children and their achievements raise.

David Willetts is prone to awkward gaffes. He once claimed that raising tuition fees would create a fairer, competitive system where only universities in ‘exceptional circumstances’ would be able to charge the top rate. Two thirds are now planning to. He then decided that feminism was the ‘single biggest factor’ in the decline of social mobility since the 1960s. His latest scrape has been announcing that the solution to his messy, down-and-out, reaching-broke university system is to award extra, off-quota places to the rich – on the condition that they do, of course, pay that bit extra for them.

It is a proposal so nonsensical, so deluded and utterly defenceless that Willetts was forced to withdraw his support for it within four hours of it being announced. Cash-for-places means precisely that. Universities who have filled their quota of places the normal way would then be able to charge premium rates for off-quota ones. The candidates who take up the extra places would not be eligible for publicly funded loans to pay tuition fees or living costs, thus plumping up university coffers but not simultaneously draining the public purse.

Put very simply, the wealthy students who do not make the grade first time round get a second chance if they can afford to buy their way in. Willetts was blowing a lot of hot air about a ‘needs-blind’ application process, where all candidates are first assessed regardless of income, and the most privileged offered those at the premium rate. This is a sly way of trying to mask what the proposal actually means: within the quota places would still be awarded to the best and brightest, rich or poor, but those who narrowly miss the cut would be offered a back-door route in.

Aaron Porter, for once stepping up to the plate, called Willett’s mess ‘a two-tier system that allows the richest, less able applicants a second bite at the university cherry and denies low- and middle-income students the same opportunity.’ Imagine an Oxford course with a quota of 100 places and 300 applicants. The 100 places would still be awarded to the best applicants; another 10 could be offered to the wealthiest of those 200 who were unsuccessful.

Perhaps loading the rich into less well-funded courses is a good thing. If half of all places were awarded on income as opposed to merit, university education could become entirely self-funding. Let’s add a few thickos to the mix if it means we can pay for a new whiteboard.

Except, of course, university education is not about which students’ parents will subsidise teaching hours and extra equipment. What Willetts offers is a system which manages to leave even the wealthy short-changed. Would you have been quite so proud of receiving an offer from Oxford if that offer could also be bought by those with the sufficient cash? Even worse, if you were the one whose offer had been bought for you?

What Willetts proposed was a two-tier muddle where, on one level, breeding matters rather than brains. The rich already possess multiple advantages in the race for university places: private education and out-of-school tuition, exposure to a culturally rich environment which working-class children are denied. Ring-fencing another advantage at the level of applications themselves will not help them, and it will definitely not help the worse-off. The outrage which accompanied this horrible idea speaks for itself.

When David Willetts was a shadow MP, he wrote a book called The Pinch: How the Baby-boomers stole their children’s future. Rather ironically, he’s now coming to steal yours.  

What is a ‘super-injunction’?

A super-injunction is a type of interim prohibitory injunction — an order made by a court which temporarily prohibits someone from doing something. In most cases, it prevents a person from publishing private or confidential information about the claimant and disclosing the existence of the injunction or the legal proceedings to others. Super-injunctions differ from “anonymised injunctions”, which prohibit publication of the names of litigants, but do not prohibit disclosure of the injunction itself. Importantly, both orders are temporary: they are granted in order to preserve the status quo until trial, but the secrecy they confer is generally short-lived. A valid super-injunction binds both the parties and anyone who has notice of the injunction. If you knowingly breach the terms of an injunction, you are potentially liable for contempt of court, which carries penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment.

Are they ever justified?

Despite the recent hype, super-injunctions are very rarely granted. The media often confuses them with anonymity orders, which are commonplace and less problematic. Mr Cameron’s recent criticism of super-injunctions suggests that they are “new laws”; in reality, they are procedural orders giving effect to existing privacy rights under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was transposed into domestic law by Parliament over a decade ago in the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK). Super-injunctions have mainly been granted in privacy cases or to protect commercial trade secrets. In both cases, the claimant must show that it is likely to succeed at trial and that the super-injunction is necessary to preserve the administration of justice. Most commonly, these cases involve some allegation of blackmail, fraud or a serious invasion of privacy (such as phone-hacking). They also tend to involve the rich and famous, though anyone could, in theory, apply for one in appropriate circumstances.

Why are the press therefore so critical of super-injunctions?

Journalists have criticised super-injunctions on two main grounds: first, that they undermine the principle of ‘open justice’, which requires that court proceedings be heard in public courts; and second, that they hinder freedom of expression. Both are fundamental principles but they are not without limitation. Whether super-injunctions can be necessary and proportionate limitations remains a matter of debate, and must be assessed in individual cases.

Can Twitter or its users be liable for breaching such an injunction?

Potentially yes. Anyone with notice of a super-injunction (which should, in theory, be very few people) can commit a contempt of court if they deliberately breach its terms. This is so even if the information has ceased being confidential — because, for example, the relevant name is ‘trending’ in Twitter — though most injunctions now have a proviso to permit publication of information that is already widely known. The personal jurisdiction of English courts generally does not extend to acts committed in other countries. Accordingly, even if it could be said that Twitter, by automatically publishing contemnors’ tweets, was itself publishing the relevant information, it could not commit under English law a contempt of court in California.