There is no more sick-making sight than the assembled
whingeing of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet trying
to offload their abject failure on someone – anyone but them. Now that the
name of Rolf Harris has finally been pitched as being interviewed as part of Operation Yewtree, the
almost five month delay has to be explained, however lamely.
That Harris had been talking to the Police was notified on
November 29 by Mark Williams-Thomas via Twitter. There was no subterfuge, no
ambiguity, and there was no rebuke of any kind from those acting for the
veteran entertainer, let alone the commencement of legal action. There was
nothing to stop the press from making their own enquiries and publishing.
Harris’ lawyers, Harbottle and Lewis, then
pressured the press into keeping schtum.
That they quoted the report from the Leveson Inquiry has meant that, once
again, every pundit is trotting out the keyword “chilling”. But the big beasts of the media jungle could quite
easily have cited a public interest defence and gone ahead anyway. That they
did not tells you two things.
One, that they were dealing with someone in his 80s in
declining health meant the possibility of public backlash, had the Fourth
Estate gone after their quarry the way they did with Christopher Jefferies. And
two, it was in their interest to go along with the lawyers, so they could at a
later date use the story as a stick to beat anyone who had the temerity to
support a new system of press regulation.
The attempt to deflect onto Leveson is
typified by the latest rent-a-rant by Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, who dutifully
tells of “a chilling effect on free
speech” and accuses others of “bullying”,
while not mentioning the litany of cases over the years where the paper in
which she writes – the Daily Mail –
has not given a stuff about what their targets’ lawyers have said.
This ability to use the legal profession to its own
advantage is what dissuaded the Information Commissioner’s Office from pursuing
papers like the Mail over Operation
Motorman, and all the illegal information gathering organised by Steve
Whittamore. Yet now the same paper bleats that it is defending “our
free society and the public’s right to know”. Cue hollow laughter.
What the likes of Paul Dacre calls “the public’s right to know” is the right of his paper to tell its
readers what he decrees they should be told. Had he believed there was an
advantage to be gained in naming Harris, he would have gone ahead and ordered
his hacks over the top. The attempt to smear Leveson by suggesting that the Mail was gagged, when it could have done
otherwise, will not wash.
The press is once again protesting a little bit too much. No change there, then.
1 comment:
My biggest concern about this is the consequences of what happens if Rolf Harris turns out to be guilty. This Police investigation must be treated on its own merits like any other investigation. If the allegations cannot be proven, he must be presumed innocent. If the are, he must face the full consequences for it.
But the thing I found most deeply uncomfortable about the coverage of the Savile episode was the complete lack of interest in due process. There was only ever one way that the allegations against Savile could be proven (as far as you can prove allegations of this kind against someone who's dead), and that was if victims gave accounts independently of each other which were consistent with how he operated. I trawled through the news coverage and eventually found this was the case, but this fact was buried in page after page of juicy witness statements. One would have thought the first question a journalist would ask of the Police is "How did you reach this verdict?"
No, as far as the papers are concerned, the proof of Savile's guilt is that 1) some allegations were made, and 2) "I always knew he was strange". And the number of people retrospectively claiming the second point is scary. Rolf Harris might be getting a sympathetic hearing from the press now, but should the allegations turn out to be correct, expect the press to do a U-turn and start saying "Well, it was obvious all along, wasn't it?" We are dangerously close to legitimising the mindset that anyone deemed odd my mainstream society will automatically be treated as a proven child-abuser on the basis of allegations alone. This is why I really have he turns out to be innocent - I dread to think what sort of weirdo-bashing will begin if he's not.
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