UK Gags Guardian, but Twitter Airs Suppressed Story

The Guardian has been slapped with an unprecedented gag order forbidding it from reporting on a question in the British parliament, as well as who asked the question and why it's being gagged. The paper says constitutional rights are being infringed upon and it's already suing—but meanwhile, the suppressed story is already the talk of Twitter. Three of this morning's top trending topics relate to the energy company Trafigura allegedly dumping toxic waste in Africa, which the Guardian revealed last month.

The Guardian, in what its editor called a "Kafkaesque" situation, was only allowed to report that the case involved a famous law firm specializing in suing the media. That was enough for social media users to dig up the story and link to a censored report hosted on Wikileaks detailing Trafigura's attempted cover-up of the dumping scandal. "Combating this sort of bullying," observes a writer at the Spectator, "is one thing the blogosphere is good at." (More Guardian stories.)