What we now know about the incident known as Plebgate is
that there is rather a lot that we don’t know about it. But that was not the
case either in the beginning – when everyone was certain that there was a
difference of opinion between former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell and the
Police – and certainly not after the Police log of the incident was leaked to a
paper that wanted to publish it.
At that point, all those who were certain that there had
been a difference of opinion became certain that Mitchell had behaved
outrageously badly towards a number of unfortunate law enforcement officers and
therefore had to go. And they were equally certain that the arrest of one of
those officers signalled the end of press freedom, democracy and everything
that they held dear.
Alongside that was the idea that Lord Justice Leveson, who
was held to be in league with the Hacked Off campaign, was behind it all. “A PC arrested for revealing the truth? This
is the world Leveson’s enthusiasts crave. Choose democracy, oppose Hacked Off”
Tweeted Tim Luckhurst, whose own democratic mandate, sadly, does not exist.
Nor, it now appears, does much of that “truth”.
Luckhurst’s rant was echoed by Collette Walsh, Tweeting “Now we’re arresting PCs who expose the truth
... disgrace”. What was a disgrace, though, was that hacks like her were
taking a single source – that has brought us a whole series of whoppers in the
recent past – and taking it as unimpeachable fact without bothering to do the
most basic research as to whether it really was “the truth”.
Even John Mullin of the Independent
on Sunday called the arrest “unbelievable”
without stopping to ask why it had happened. That’s doubly worrying, given the IoS’ usually sound journalism, and added
to Luckhurst being the originator of a highly regarded degree course for aspiring
journos while being unable to stop and think makes one wonder if the Fourth
Estate has lost the ability to do its job.
There were seemingly no barriers to being taken in: Neville “stylish masturbator” Thurlbeck was
another of the old hands (ho ho ho) assuming something sinister about the
arrest: “This is the sort of country
failed/embittered/wannabe/neverwillbe journalists of Hacked Off want you to
live in” he Tweeted. So that’s another who is happy with a single
unverified source, then.
And to cap it all, Neil “Wolfman”
Wallis managed to suggest something scary was at work behind the scenes: “I’m no conspiracy theorist, I promise you,
but at every turn those who pay lip service to press freedom are combining to
try and kill it”. Well, combining to not bothering to check out that single
source and thereby killing the freedom of the public to know the facts
certainly looks to have taken place here.
So who did that, assembled hacks? That would be you, not Hacked Off or Leveson.
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