Obsolete

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The desperately awful case of Poppi Worthington.

The perpetrators of sexual abuse are inadequate individuals who control weaker people, often children, for their own gratification. Their behaviour is always an abuse of power and usually a breach of trust. They destroy families and blight childhoods. They create dread in their victims by convincing them that the consequences of speaking out will be worse than the consequences of silence. They create guilt in their victims by persuading them that they have somehow willingly participated in their own abuse. They burden their victims with secrets. They poison normal relationships, trade on feelings of affection, drive a wedge between their victims and others, and make family and friends take sides. They count on the failure or inability of responsible adults, both relatives and professionals, to protect and support the victims. Faced with exposure, they commonly turn on their victims, try to assassinate their characters, and get others to do the same. Most often, their selfishness is so deep-rooted that they ignore other people's feelings and are only capable of feeling pity for themselves.

So opens the judgement of Mr Justice Peter Jackson in the case of Wigan Council and M, Mr C, Mr P, GM, G, B and CC. The rest of the ruling continues in a similar vein of perspicacity, acute in its legal reasoning, angry at what G and B, abused for years by their stepfather Mr C, put them through, and the failure of the authorities to do anything about it. Indeed, despite Jackson's judgement, no criminal proceedings have been brought against Mr C. It is essentially a case of the word of G and B, whom Jackson describes as "impressive witnesses", giving "compelling" accounts with "no hint of malice", against that of their self-admitted "habitual, deliberate" liar step-father, who made a "thoroughly unimpressive witness".

If there was any coverage of the case beyond the local area, I failed to notice it. There almost certainly wasn't. Media coverage requires names, known names preferably. Some cases are so terrible, or treated as such that they do make waves: Victoria Climbie, Baby P, perhaps the exception the proves the rule. At other times, pure chance seems to come into play.

Such as seems to be the case with Poppi Worthington. The true reason as to why the case of her death suddenly made the headlines yesterday is as much to do with the media itself as the facts involved. Following the issuing of new guidelines on transparency in family courts back in January 2014, a consortium of media organisations challenged Cumbria County Council's request for strict reporting restrictions. Yesterday's judgement marks the conclusion of the court process, following Poppi's father's challenge to the initial ruling.

That the Worthington case is especially upsetting and distressing does not seem to be the reason for the coverage. If anything, and quite understandably considering the exact details involved, most of the reporting has skirted around precisely what happened to her. Most reports only mention a "sexual assault", and leave it at that, with some also hinting towards bleeding. Along with how it seemed odd that I hadn't heard anything about this case before, it was the mention of how three medical experts apparently disagreed that Poppi had been sexually assaulted, and yet the judge had still ruled that she was, that made me look up on the judgement on Bailii.

Which is of course something anyone can do, and yet also seems to have not been done by some of those who have commented publicly on the case. Sir Simon Hughes for instance, and Yvette Cooper, to judge by their remarks, in Cooper's case in the House of Commons. Anyone who has read Mr Justice Peter Jackson's judgement will soon see why there is not the slightest chance of a second police investigation into the circumstances of Poppi Worthington's death, and also why there would be no point in such an investigation.

The details of failings and mistakes in the immediate aftermath of Poppi's sudden death are sadly all too familiar. On the balance of probabilities, as is the legal standard in the family court, Jackson finds that Poppi was the victim of a penetrative anal assault by her father, Paul Worthington. While almost everything else in the case is either disputed or would be unable to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, the legal standard in the criminal court, it is uncontested that Poppi was bleeding from the bottom when she was found unconscious. No one, including Poppi's father legal team, has been able to come up with an alternative explanation as to how she came to be bleeding from the bottom, even while disputing that the injuries themselves were caused by sexual assault.

The inability to prove Worthington definitively assaulted his daughter is in part down to said failings. The gloves the answering paramedic was wearing when he carried Poppi to the ambulance were thrown away. The sheet Poppi was laid on in the ambulance, which the paramedic noticed had blood and faeces on after she was taken into the hospital, was discarded. The nappy Poppi had been wearing at the time she stopped breathing was thrown away by a relative and unable to be found, something done in front of a police officer and after the injuries to Poppi were known about. Paul Worthington was not questioned and did not have his penis swabbed until at least 5 hours after the details of Poppi's injuries had become clear, by which time he had urinated at least once. Before she carried out the post-mortem, referring to fractures already found in Poppi's right leg, the pathologist Dr Armour suggested to the police officers who were briefing her that she believed this was a case of child abuse. This it seems was taken to be a "rash statement", and when Dr Armour subsequently phoned their superior officer DCI F with her initial findings, he refused to authorise forensic tests of the samples or items taken, with the exception of the father's blood. Dr Armour did not complete a final report until 6 months after the post-mortem, with the reasoning in a case of this seriousness she wanted to have all the histology results before committing herself. It was a further two months until the police instructed for the forensic tests to go ahead. While DNA from Poppi was found to have been on the shaft of her father's penis, there was none on the glans or where the tip and the shaft join. Nor was any blood or faecal matter found, as would be expected, if not inevitable. Nor was any semen found on or in Poppi, or on the sheet from her cot. Dr Armour's conclusions on the injuries caused to Poppi's rectum were and are heavily disputed: while all the doctors and experts involved in both the first and second hearing see what the other is describing, they disagree significantly on how to interpret the findings, and on whether they are a result of penetration.

Failing the second inquest reaching radically different conclusions to the first, unlikely when there is further dispute over the injuries to Poppi's pharynx/oesophagus and nasal bleeding, the chances of Worthington facing any sort of trial are basically nil. The evidence needed to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt simply isn't there. Put it this way: if Simon Harwood was found not guilty when there was video evidence of him pushing over Ian Tomlinson, in a case where the medical evidence was similarly disputed, in a case where there is nothing other than that disputed medical evidence there is no case. Mr Justice Peter Jackson accepts as much in his ruling, referring to his previous cases such as the one related in the opening, where criminal charges have either not been brought, or have and dismissed by a jury as to the differences between family and criminal court.

On occasion the CPS gets decisions wrong. It operates on the margins, as Matthew Scott notes in his piece on the Henriques Report into what were reported as the missed opportunities to prosecute Lord Janner. Evidence that was regarded as weak can in hindsight look to have been worth testing in court. When the evidence (or lack of it) is available for anyone who wants to see it though, and still politicians pontificate, they should be called on it.

Labels: child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Lord Janner, media coverage, politics, Poppi Worthington

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1/20/2016 07:31:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, November 13, 2015

If he hadn't existed, we would have invented him. Oh, we did anyway.

I've just heard that Jihadi John is dead. Had his head taken off by a golf ball. Tragic, tragic!

Or at least that's the way Basil Fawlty might have put it. Frankly, it would have been preferable to David Cameron's statement. You can understand President Obama announcing to the world the death of Osama bin Laden; when David Cameron feels the need to put out a lectern in Downing Street and starts explaining how killing Mohammed Emwazi is "a strike at the heart of Isil", it's time for a drink.

Mohammed Emwazi was a nobody, and he ought to have remained a nobody. The only slightly interesting thing about him is how he came to be radicalised, and then it remains only slightly interesting. He had no real position of authority or command in Islamic State; he became notable only because he was chosen from any one of however many Western recruits to be the organisation's face to the West. David Cameron called him Islamic State's chief executioner, which is arguably true, in that he was the one who murdered the group's Western hostages. By comparison to any number of Islamic State's ordinary cadres however, he almost certainly killed far fewer than many of his fellow fighters. Once the Western hostages apart from John Cantlie were murdered, he returned to the shadows, both because there was little further use for him and because the Western media and politicians had conspired to make him Islamic State, far more than Islamic State's actual leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ever has been.

Killing Emwazi proves we have a long reach, said Cameron. Well yes, it certainly is a long reach, so long that it took months after he stopped being a direct threat to us or our citizens to pick him up, or in this case obliterate via drone. In this instance there probably wasn't any alternative: dropping special forces into Raqqa and expecting them to get out alive or without potentially being captured themselves was a risk few would be willing to take. Killing Emwazi in such a way raises fewer questions than the previous extrajudicial strike against Reyaad Khan did, not least because Emwazi's crimes were filmed, not merely alleged plots, and it was an American rather than a British operation. With no other possible way to capture him, and without anything to suggest he would leave Syria except in a body bag, there is an arguable case that doing so was in "self-defence" as Cameron claimed. That's all it remains, arguable.

As Jeremy Corbyn has said (and of course as soon as the news came through Emwazi had been killed our great political journalists began to speculate on how terrorist lover Corbo would equivocate), it appears as if he has been held to account for his crimes. That's the best that can be said though, as killing someone, however vile and however brutal their crimes is not a substitute for a trial, nor will it ever be.

David Cameron finished his statement by saying his thoughts were with those who Emwazi so cruelly murdered, and their families. They would be remembered long after the killers of Isil had been forgotten, he insisted.

Except, sadly, they won't. We remember the murderers, not the victims. We know of Jack the Ripper, of Peter Sutcliffe, of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, while the names of those whose lives they ended are firmly in the background, if that. When the prime minister has to refer to Emwazi by his tabloid nickname, it's clear who will be remembered in 10, 20 years time, and it won't be Alan Henning, David Haines, James Foley, Steven Sotloff or Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig, let alone Haruna Yukawa, Kenji Goto or the unnamed and unknown Syrian officer Emwazi was also filmed beheading, without any cutaways as was the case with the Westerners.

Killing Emwazi is not even the cutting of a head off the Hydra. It's the equivalent of cutting off the head of the Hydra's spokesman.

Labels: David Cameron, foreign policy, Islamic State, media analysis, media coverage, Mohammed Emwazi, politics

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11/13/2015 02:58:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, March 02, 2015

Of Savile and Emwazi: the "monsters" in our midst.

There are times when it's difficult to judge how flippant, snarky and blasé to be about the everyday horrors of the news. Comments which to a friend are made in the context of a shared antipathy to the routine stupidity of the media look awful when shorn of it, as they can on a blog to someone unfamiliar with its general style. Ripping on coverage or the often self-appointed voices of the voiceless can easily fall into being criticism of those who are seeking justice, or most certainly ends up looking that way.

With that in mind, I honestly can't think of a few days of media coverage so utterly lacking in apparent wider awareness as the ones we've just been through. It's a toss-up as to the most evil person to have ever lived: is it Jimmy Savile, apparently the most prolific and depraved sex offender of all time, and whom despite his proclivities being so widely known, whether by hospital staff, journalists who couldn't get their exposes past lawyers or just through rumours, managed to escape justice? Or is it "Jihadi John" (the last time I am ever going to refer to him as such), aka Mohammed Emwazi, Islamic State's propaganda executioner de jour, at last unmasked so we can know every last detail of his utterly banal life and attempt to pinpoint just when it was he decided he wanted to behead aid workers for a living as opposed to continue his career in IT?

The weight of evidence against Savile being an abuser at places where he was in a position of authority is overwhelming, as proved by the report into his activities at Stoke Mandeville hospital. What has most certainly not been proved is that he acted the same way wherever he went, as documented by Anna Raccoon bothering to read all the other reports produced by various NHS trusts, and which the media have bunched together as being similarly damning. Even taking into consideration how faulty memory is, not least when the events under investigation took place anything up to 50 years ago, the lack of almost anything turned up by the various people behind the reports suggests Savile was a very ordinary sex offender, just one given extraordinary opportunities by his fame, charity work and patronage by politicians and royals among other powerful figures. He attacked the vulnerable when he was certain of not being caught, or when he knew others would cover for him, in the exact same way as the vast majority of sex offenders have and always will.

Clearly though such findings aren't what's required when Savile has been worked up to be the monster to end all monsters. The Stoke Mandeville report shamefully reproduces the rumours about Savile not just being content with the living but also going after the dead, as obviously such a man with access to the mortuary couldn't have a simple fascination with death as opposed to wanting something else. His reported time spent with his mother's corpse could similarly only be about one thing. The Guardian, in what has to be one of the most ridiculous editorials the paper has ever published, reflects it is "difficult to comprehend the existence of such a completely unrestrained id". Well yes, it might be if half of what has been written or claimed is true, as opposed to the febrile imaginations of journalists taking the already shocking and deciding the ante has to be upped.

And so the editorial goes on, in what can be taken as being the general tenor of much of the coverage. The writer manages to weave in the exhumation of the judges who condemned Charles the II's father to death, obviously primitive behaviour to us now "but the savage, theatrical desecration captures and discharges something of the rage that Savile’s wickedness inspires today", before moving on to mention Pol Pot, who oblivion is also too good for. One way of addressing the need for closure or something like it robbed of us by Savile's death could be a "public ceremony of what used to be called commination, a ritual expression of public condemnation and disgust". Or we could just let the nation's hacks carry on as they have been and leave it at that.

From a larger than life monster we move to one previously identifiable only by his gravelly London accent. If making Savile out to be evil incarnate is daft or rather distraction, when no one seems to really want to inquire into how it was Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles were taken in by his charms, especially curious when the likes of Leon Brittan are cast to the dogs without a scintilla of evidence being presented against them, then the frotting of Emwazi, as that's what it's been, has been jaw dropping in its stupidity. In the space of four days nearly every aspect of Emwazi's life prior to his joining Islamic State has been set out, no detail being too slight to be ignored. He went to school with Tulisa, didn't have any social media accounts, worked in Kuwait where he was a model employee, was a "beautiful man", had a collision with a goal post, played Duke Nukem, joined a gang, was bullied, had bad breath, "borderline stalked" a girl he was supposedly infatuated with, used both drink and drugs, was "painfully shy", has a Chelsea tattoo on the back of his neck, was allegedly choked by an MI5 officer, played five-a-side football, got a second from the University of Westminster, and took anger management courses as a teenager.

That I've only made one of the above things up is testament to how unrestrained by any notion of well, sanity the detailing of Emwazi's past has been. Some of it has no doubt been prompted by how up till now he has been the face of Islamic State, and the obvious shock that comes from someone who grew up in Britain killing on camera out of political-cum-religious motivation, but all the same. Emwazi is not the Islamic State; he most probably is not even above a middle ranking position in the organisation; he's a propaganda prop, utterly disposable, and that's it. He's a tool (in more ways than one), just as the cadres of extremist organisations in the past have carried out the orders of their leaders. Making him out to be something more is to fall completely into the gaping trap of turning him into a hero for bedroom jihadis and other fellow travellers, which is of course precisely what IS wants. It's why he was the centrepoint of the mass beheading of Syrian officers, with other foreign fighters at his side, why the camera zoomed on his face as he carried out the act. What the media hasn't reported is the fear in those eyes, instead of the defiance and belligerence they were meant to convey.

There is next to no need to understand how he came to be Islamic State's chief prop. Perhaps there's something in the stories of his time at school, but equally perhaps there's not. The important facts are the all too familiar ones: he was part of a wider group of extremists who no doubt reinforced each other's beliefs; they were known to the security services; they had some contact with him; he ended up going to Syria. Exactly how he came to be radicalised is of slight interest, but only slight. Maybe it somewhat happened at university, perhaps he was already going down that path. Perhaps the bull in a china shop actions of MI5 had some influence on his decisions, perhaps they didn't. If there are questions deserving answers, it's on just how serious MI5 is when it suggests to those it encounters they become informants, as it does seem to have been offered to almost every individual who has subsequently launched an attack. Does it ever work? How does MI5 know it isn't being played? Has it really, honestly, prevented attacks?

All too predictably with the election coming, much hay is being made by all parties over just who can best protect the nation from such people. The Tories say they know better than universities who should and shouldn't be allowed to speak on campus, the Lib Dems say no, they do, and Labour says control orders should be brought back, as they were just as big a success as TPIMs. The reality is no one has the first fucking idea on how we can stop more Emwazis, only they're a massive threat and something ought to be done. Instead it's easier to detail Emwazi's life up to now in much the same vein as a MTV "behind the music" docu would, only in this instance everyone's looking "behind the terror". Because it couldn't be there just isn't anything to find, could it?

Labels: Islamic State, Jimmy Savile, media analysis, media coverage, media stupidity, Mohammed Emwazi

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3/02/2015 10:16:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, February 05, 2015

The numbers game and demanding something must be done.

Many of us have a problem with getting our heads round numbers. The chief point of protest from those in Rotherham to Louise Casey's inspection team, sent in after Alexis Jay's report into child sexual exploitation in the town, was the 1,400 victims figure. As I pointed out at the time, Jay had reached this number by not so much as an estimate but an outright guess, as the documentation was so lacking. Her team had also read only 66 case files as part of random sample.

Casey in her report writes "those denying the figures could not point to any more authoritative figure" (page 22), precisely because of the lack of documentation or the changing counting methods, or indeed different things being counted in the documentation. In other words, no one has the slightest idea just how many children have been sexually exploited in Rotherham, but it's a high one and Jay's figure is probably a conservative estimate, or rather guess. When you consider that again Casey is counting not just those definitively groomed by Pakistani heritage gangs, but who may have been abused by members of their own family, it puts further doubt on her own conclusion.

This is not to deny the accuracy of Casey's other conclusion, that behind the questioning of the figure, by the councillors at least, was the denial of the very real problem of CSE. Alexis Jay's report otherwise was excellent, and if anything Casey's work distracts from it. When however you have a number that is focused on above everything else, as happened with the excess deaths figure leaked to the press concerning the Mid-Staffs care scandal, a figure that didn't appear in the final report precisely because it was felt to be confusing, it does invite questioning and disbelief.

Which brings us to another example of what happens when the very best of intentions, the demand something must be done, leads to poor decision making. Back in February last year the Guardian and other newspapers began a campaign against the continued practice of female genital mutilation. As worthy causes go, there isn't a much higher one: there is no reason whatsoever why so much as a single girl living in this country should be cut in such a way, nor should it ever be tolerated, regardless of any cultural sensitivity. It's a crime, and its chief aim is to prevent women from experiencing pleasure during sex for the purposes of "control".

Alongside the urgently needed awareness campaign was however the bandied about figure of 65,000 girls being at risk, and much emphasis was also placed on how there had not been a single prosecution in the 29 years of legislation being on the statute book. The reasons why there hadn't been any were fairly obvious: it's not something many victims are going to confess to until they start having serious relationships, or become pregnant. It's also nearly always organised by the victim's relatives, if not with the active permission of the parents, with all that entails for investigations if suspicions are reported to teachers or the police. Failing careful monitoring of those most at risk, which carries with it the potential for accusations of profiling, misunderstandings and racism, it's always going to be difficult in the extreme to bring charges.

We can't then know exactly why the head of the CPS, Alison Saunders, decided to go ahead with the prosecution of Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena for committing FGM. Was she under pressure to do something because of the campaign? We do know that the prosecution was announced three days before she was due to appear before the Home Affairs Select Committee, where the failure to prosecute anyone over FGM would undoubtedly been questioned.

Nonetheless, even on the basic facts of the case it ought to have been clear that Dharmasena had acted in the interests of his patient, even if he erred in precisely the procedure he carried out. Dharmasena's patient, who did not want the doctor to be prosecuted, had undergone either type 1 or type 2 FGM as a child. Hospital policy was she should have been seen by the antenatal team earlier in her pregnancy when the damage caused by the FGM could have been repaired. For whatever reason, this hadn't occurred. Dharmasena himself had not encountered FGM previously, nor undergone training on it. After making a number of cuts to the patient in order for the baby to be delivered, it was born safely. The bleeding however didn't stop, and on the spur of the moment he put in a single continuous suture in a figure of eight. Hospital policy was the damage should not have been repaired in such a way, and was considered to be in effect reinfibulation, or carrying out the FGM again. An investigation by the hospital after Dharmasena himself raised concerns over his actions recommended further training and a "period of a reflection". It was also, fatefully, referred to the Metropolitan police.

Almost as soon as the prosecution was announced doctors responded anxiously, saying there was a world of difference between a repair being made during delivery of a baby and actual FGM. Calls for it to be dropped were however ignored, and the judge during the trial also rejected 3 separate attempts by the defence for the case to be thrown out. Even so, it took the jury little more than 30 minutes to decide Dharmasena was not guilty.

On the face of it, as the campaigning midwife Comfort Momoh commented, what Dharmasena did was against the law on FGM. This was surely though a case with extenuating circumstances, which in itself shows how further training is needed for doctors, let alone other health workers and civil servants. In the end the jury reached the correct decision and Dharmasena seems likely to be able to carry on as a doctor. It should also though concentrate the minds of journalists over the power they have to affect policy, and just how easily it can lead to good people being made scapegoats.

Labels: child abuse, Crown Prosecution Service, FGM, Grauniad-watch, media analysis, media coverage, politics, racism, Rotherham abuse scandal

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2/05/2015 10:41:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

By their works they shall be judged.

The motives behind Fox News's decision to embed on their website the full 22-minute Islamic State video featuring the murder of Muadh al-Kasasbeh are obvious. Not only will it drive traffic to a site which is read far less than its channel is watched, nothing more epitomises just how depraved and evil these Muslims are. Fox would of course never dream of showing the agonising death of an American citizen at the hands of terrorists, or probably anyone other than a fellow Muslim, a fellow brown-skinned Arab. It's also a safe bet that had it been an American or British pilot shot down, Piers Morgan wouldn't have written quite such an abominable piece for Mail Online on watching it and how it means all Muslims MUST stand up against IS as this is THEIR war. It would have rather undermined that completely specious argument for a start.

If there's one thing more distasteful than people watching the video and then boasting about doing so, it's those who say to watch it is to be complicit, to play into Islamic State's hands. It's the exact same point as was made after the hacking of celebrities' cloud accounts, only slightly modified. Not only is the message delivered invariably in a sanctimonious, holier than thou style, it also jars precisely because they're talking about something they don't want you to see, which in psychology terms rather defeats the object. Suzanne Moore also wrote during last year's Gaza war that sharing graphic images of the conflict "devalued the currency of shared humanity". Rather, it gave the lie to Israeli claims of only targeting Hamas. The real hypocrisy is how sanitised the reporting of war is in the West, at least when our servicemen are involved. The same injuries from bombing have been inflicted by British and American pilots in Afghanistan and Iraq, but only when journalists are directly caught up in it, as John Simpson was, do we see the true horror.

The fact is the media has an increasingly bizarre and idiosyncratic attitude to just what the public can and can't handle on their front pages or news channels. The denouement of hostage crises, as we saw on a Friday last month, can be shown in real time and no one bats an eye-lid as long as there isn't any viscera in the frame. Crazed killers who reacted badly to sensationalist media coverage will have their last moments recorded and played back as soon as possible for your delectation, and hardly anyone will speak up and say this is a new low. Show the real, immediate aftermath of an airstrike though, and I don't mean the gray from the air footage released by the military, a raid carried out not by terrorists or murderers but a democratic state, and many will begin to squirm and come up with reasons as to why it shouldn't be viewed.

There is a line to be drawn, obviously, and on the whole the right decisions are usually made. As yesterday's post likely made clear, I've watched a lot of jihadist video releases down the years, mostly from Iraq. I could say I did so in order to be better informed, to know your enemy, and that would certainly be part of the truth. Was part of it also curiosity though? Well, yes, and I defy anyone to say they haven't sought out material that challenged them in some way at some point, whatever it may have been. I'm not a gorehound by any means, and watching such things hasn't desensitised me in any way, shape or form. If anything, it's furthered my loathing of cruelty, my suspicion of getting involved in wars where the realities are cloaked behind a curtain. Often the attitude of dedicated researchers or experts, as voiced in the Graun's piece, appears to be only we are capable of analysing such videos and statements in a clinical manner, and to allow the hoi polloi to see them is unthinkable. Indeed, anyone in this country who watches videos by Islamic State is likely to be committing a criminal offence. To merely have in your possession a digital copy of Inspire magazine is to risk jail.

Without doubt, some of the reaction is down to the very fact you're capable of making the choice to click, rather than it being in the control of those judged to know better. Whether such a video should be as easily available as Fox News has decided to make it is dubious, if only because the more clicks or searches needed to find something, the more likely those who in their heart of hearts don't want to see it will step back. There have been times when I've thought long and hard about describing certain things on this blog, but often the decision I've reached is they need to be confronted and talked about, precisely because we all too often blanch from doing so. Many seem to prefer not to remain ignorant, but to just not know. My aim yesterday was to describe Muadh al-Kasasbeh's suffering as respectfully, accurately and calmly as I could, for anyone who did want to know but didn't want to see for themselves. The very last thing I would say is anyone should watch it; as others who have done said, including the likes of Jeremy Bowen, it is without exaggeration among the most horrific things I have ever seen, if not the most horrific.

That's why it's not enough to just write Muadh al-Kasasbeh was burned alive and leave it at that. To view what Islamic State did (as an aside, calling groups what they call themselves, regardless of their delusions of grandeur, is not to confer legitimacy on them) is not to be complicit in it. I didn't feel rage, as I did watching the previous video of the mass beheading of Syrians, which was precisely what they wanted me to feel but was at their disgusting arrogance, how it distilled the sickening narcissism of all murderers. No, I rather felt horror, sorrow and pity for their victim and all their victims. This is why it is nonsensical to say videos of their crimes are "superfluous and risk distracting us". No, they are documenting their own downfall. By such chronicling they will be known and judged. No one who doesn't want to see it has to, and no one should be judged for doing so.

Labels: foreign policy, Iraq, Islamic State, jihadists, Jordan, media analysis, media coverage, Muadh al-Kasasbeh, Syria

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2/04/2015 11:39:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Perpetuating abuse?

And there is no point saying this again / There is no point saying this again / But I forgive you, I forgive you / Always I do forgive you

There comes a time in every man's life where he has to sit down and ask himself: am I a rapist? Not am I a potential rapist, as in the age old formulation not all men are rapists, but all rapists are men, like you know, the just as accurate not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. No, have I without realising it committed hundreds, possibly thousands of sex crimes?

Horrified as I am to admit, it seems to be the case. According to Jennifer Lawrence, by so much as looking at her stolen naked self-shots I have perpetuated a sexual offence. I don't know her, she certainly doesn't know me, and yet without her knowledge I have violated her. Nor is this limited just to Lawrence. I have raped dozens of other celebrities, and by extension hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women and men. Some may well have consented to or even been paid to appear in the images and videos I've seen of them, but what if they later regretted it, they were doing it only to feed a habit, or were even coerced, as some have said they were?

But even this doesn't begin to scratch the surface of my depravity. Should I find someone attractive while going about my everyday life, there is no way for them to consent to what might be going through my mind. Of course, all the liaisons in my head are consensual, and I don't imagine having sex with every attractive woman I see, but they can't know what I'm thinking and so therefore can't tell me to stop. Just how many people is it I've abused? Did the Bible have it right in suggesting you merely have to look at a married woman in a lustful way to have committed adultery?

We have been, to drop the pretence, thrust right back into the old and increasingly hoary question of complicity. Despite its decrepitude, it still bears examining and in politics if nothing else it remains a vital one. Just this week the Sun has been urging those of faiths and none to come together to condemn Islamic State, with the usual edge of steel just beneath the surface as there always is. "Their imams must ceaselessly condemn IS", the paper intones, with the use of "their" perhaps a bit of a giveaway. There's also more than a certain irony in the recycling of the "not in my name" slogan some took up during the protests against the Iraq war of 11 years ago, this time with even less meaning than the last. More pertinent questions could be asked concerning how government policy encouraged the growth of IS in the first place, but first Muslims ought to deny responsibility for something they have no control over.

Have us ordinary mortals transgressed then for merely looking at Lawrence and the other celebrities as they only wanted themselves or partners to see them? Quite simply, no. I say this despite pretty much agreeing with Lawrence on every other point she made in the interview with Vanity Fair. She doesn't have a thing to apologise for, and the people who broke into her iCloud or however they obtained the images quite possibly are detached from humanity. This was beyond mere "revenge porn", where an embittered ex releases images shared with them in confidence; it was targeted and criminal. All the same, when there's nothing you can do to get the images taken down, not least when they existed in the "cloud" in the first place, looking for yourself does not perpetuate the offence. The abuse has already occurred; you can't make things any worse unless you join in by attempting to profit from the crime. Watching something that has already occurred does not make you complicit in it; as previously argued, it's only when it goes beyond the looking for the unusual into something darker, to the point where you're changed by it that we need to start worrying.

I don't recall for instance anyone having a problem with Caitlin Moran relating how she felt after watching the leaked video of the "Dnepropetrovsk maniacs" murdering Sergei Yatzenko. It probably encouraged more than a few other people to go and watch it, just as it was a passing craze to show the infamous "2 girls 1 cup" clip to someone unsuspecting and film their reaction. Few pointed out the women in the video most likely earned a relative pittance, at least by American porn standards for their performance, nor worried about how it becoming a minor phenomenon could have affected them personally. Ex-porn actors in the US have come under pressure to quit positions they've merely volunteered for, so you can only ponder how difficult it could have made life in Brazil for the women. As a porn producer related in the Graun just this week, there are still those who might shoot perhaps one scene without realising that once it's online it's next to impossible to remove, even if the producer themselves acquiesces to their request to take it down. The internet, if you want it to be, is a test of morals in itself.

The question to ask is where such a standpoint leads, and then there's the paradox within it, as Lawrence hints at. You can't properly comment on something without seeing it, unless that is you're Mary Whitehouse or a politician. At the same time, to look is to perpetuate the abuse. Presumably the Vanity Fair interviewer had seen them prior to conducting the interview, and if Jessica Valenti hasn't also I'd be extremely surprised.

To give Lawrence the last word, in the interview she expresses disappointment rather than anger at how those she knows and loves had also looked at the pictures, which gives a better indication of how our minds work than anything else. When even those closest to her, the most likely to empathise with her plight couldn't resist temptation, what chance the rest of us?

Labels: celebrities, fappening, hypocrisy, Jennifer Lawrence, media analysis, media coverage, pornography, sex

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10/09/2014 10:08:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Of walking abortion.

(Excuse the lack of source links in this post, for apparent reasons. You without a doubt know the sites I'm talking about anyway.)

Loser / liar / fake or phoney, no one cares / everyone is guilty / fucked up, dunno why, you poor little boy

Do you really need me to point out the almost myriad hypocrisies, ironies and contradictions involved in the new and old media coverage of the leaked celebrity pictures, or "the fappening", as it was quickly christened (please don't ask me to explain what fapping is, as if you either don't know or can't guess we'll all be better off in the long run)? Probably not. The most obvious, as this blog is nothing if not obvious, was running articles about how so much as looking at the pictures is to perpetuate the abuse, a position in itself which has been examined and argued over, addressed in horror films, pornography and often come up found wanting, while at the same time hosting news stories explaining precisely where it was you needed to go if you wanted to find them. If indeed, dear reader, you had not already sought them out, had them posted in your social media timeline or found out about them on a forum or elsewhere. The BBC's report last night even included a picture of the front page of the site in question, for crying out loud.

Instead, let's start off with some of the basic inaccuracies which are still appearing in many of the articles on the leak. Some give the impression that stolen images of around 100 celebrities have been posted. They have not, or haven't been as yet. Rather, a list of the names of around 100 celebrities/famous women was posted alongside the images, with the implication being that if images/videos of them hadn't been released, they would be shortly, or could be as on some forums the poster was asking for bitcoins to be paid to their account, whereafter they would then release more images. Instead, images of around 25 celebrities have been released, not all of which are explicit, and in some cases there have only been one or two pictures of the celebrity posted. By far the largest caches were of files stolen/hacked from either the iClouds or phones of Ali Michael and Kate Upton, or to be precise in Upton's case, from her partner Justin Verlander's account. Contrary to some of the reports, there have been no images posted of Rhianna, Kim Kardashian or Scarlett Johansson to name but three, despite their appearing on the list. Simply down to how their names are among the most recognisable, they seem to have been included. All three have also had explicit images and or videos leaked in the past, which might have added to the confusion.

The main problem has been that as of yet we still don't definitively know how the images were acquired, what method was used or whether there was a "gang" in the real sense involved or rather just a few individuals who then swapped files with each other. The most compelling explanation for how the leak happened so far is there was a group of people who individually had gained access to the cloud accounts of celebrities, who then started exchanging their finds with others who had also managed to "rip" the accounts of famous women. To gain access to more of the cache you had to provide new material, or "wins".

Whether one of these individuals then went rogue, or gave the files to a friend, on Sunday afternoon a thread was posted on a well known image board that contained most of the pictures since available everywhere. Others were posted later on Sunday, with a couple of new images shared on Monday, but there's been nothing since. This could mean there's nothing else to release, the list of names was a masturbatory fabrication, and that screengrabs of folders containing censored thumbnails of as yet unreleased further images/videos posted were also fake, or that in time they will also be leaked. What we do know is that on other boards prior to last Sunday there had been people saying they could rip iCloud accounts in exchange for either other images or bitcoins, and also talk of specific celebrities, of whom images were then leaked. Whether as Apple claims an exploit wasn't used, and this was "hacking" of the old, brute force method, with an element of "social engineering" (which in the context of phone hacking we called blagging), also isn't as yet fully clear.

If there wasn't then enough dissonance around how it happened, there's much, more more about the ethics of all concerned. It would be easier to just say we're all guilty, and we are, but that doesn't begin to cover it. Obviously, the hacking itself is reprehensible; the images and videos leaked are the personal, intensely private and intimate record of the celebrities' lives. At the same time however, that doesn't make the crime any worse than ripping the accounts of ordinary people in the search for explicit images, or a bitter, jealous ex-boyfriend or girlfriend posting the images shared with them in confidence, as part of a relationship, as "revenge". The FBI have got involved entirely down to whom the victims are; if they were to do so in every case of "revenge porn" they wouldn't have time to keep entrapping American Muslims.

As we have to accept, once something is online it's incredibly difficult to get it removed. The European Court of Justice ruling on the "right to be forgotten", as welcome in principle as it is, will be and has already been abused by the rich and famous. The argument is often made in the case of child abuse images, to so much as seek them out is to abuse that child and to encourage the people who produced that image to abuse others. This is questionable when child pornography is not made to order; it is not marketed or produced by an industry; it is made by abusers for abusers yes, but once out in the wild it does not as porn does, make stars out of those depicted in it; quite the contrary in fact. The more people who view it, the more likely it is the child will be rescued or the perpetrators will be caught. This is why, unlike with ordinary porn, images that have existed for decades are still exchanged far more often than newly produced material is. Vintage porn is a niche for those who get nostalgic for the so-called "golden age", in fact a time when despite the higher production values, the women were treated abysmally and the industry was riddled with criminals and chancers. There are still instances of both today, but nowhere near to the same extent.

When explicit images of the already famous or the almost famous are leaked, it can go one of two ways. It can make the person even more famous, such as in the case of the aforementioned Kim Kardashian, or it can ruin them, destroying their career, resilience and confidence. Despite the initially supportive reaction when an explicit video of Tulisa Contostavlos was posted online, she was then targeted by Mazher Mahmood, in a despicable instance of someone already down on their luck being abused to sell newspapers. By the same token, the newspapers and news sites pretending to be disgusted and outraged by this most base invasion of privacy fall over themselves to buy long-lens shots of celebrities either in bikinis or topless on holiday, and fill their columns with instances of "side-boob" or "wardrobe malfunctions", when that is the paparazzi aren't sticking their cameras right up the skirts of starlets. They ridicule their fashion sense, or alternatively praise them when they get it "right". Not so long ago Emma Watson tweeted a photo of her make-up bag, filled with all the beauty products she uses to get the "perfect" look demanded of her, the kind of quiet act of rebellion that ought to shame those invested at every level of the fame game and surrounding culture, but doesn't.

There is something additionally transgressive in seeing the famous as they want their partners to see them, rather than the public, just as some of it also as much about the modern need to record everything. Taking naked self-shots has become entirely ordinary; when Jennifer Lawrence also does, an actress who doesn't so much as have a Twitter account, the urge to see behind the facade is easy to understand. The vast majority of the stars also have nothing to be embarrassed about, beyond how they will undoubtedly blame themselves for not realising their photos were in the cloud, or their passwords weren't secure enough, regardless of how it's not their fault. The more explicit images of Lawrence circulating are not her; the ones that are simply show a beautiful young woman, confident in her sexuality. Only those she trusted should have seen them; it would be a further abuse if this was to shatter that confidence.

The hope has to be none of those caught up in the leak suffer a similar fate to Contostavlos, victory over Mahmood in court notwithstanding, although frankly it's difficult not to fear for Jessica Brown Findlay, something best left at that. Looking at or for the outré, the unusual, is normal; it's when it goes beyond that into the unhealthy, the obsessional, the genuinely degrading and abusive that we have to worry and make judgements.

Labels: celebrities, fappening, hypocrisy, media analysis, media coverage, pornography, sex

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9/03/2014 11:07:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, September 01, 2014

Y'all are breaking the first two rules of Fight Club.

EXCLUSIVE TO ALL NEWSPAPERS AND NEWS SITES

IF YOU DOWNLOAD THE LEAKED CELEBRITY PICTURES YOU'RE JUST AS BAD AS THE EVIL, VILE PERVERT WHO RELEASED THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, PERPETUATING THE ABUSE

A COMPLETE HISTORY OF EBAUM'S WORLD, THE WEBSITE WHERE YOU CAN FIND THE LEAKED CELEBRITY PICTURES

In related news:

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, Hadley Freeman and Jess Cartner-Morley on how to take a better naked selfie - "get the lighting right and the rest will follow"

Kate Upton joins Arsenal on season-long loan in defensive midfielder role

Seth MacFarlane Oscar routine suddenly even creepier in retrospect

David Cameron attacks Magna Carta, media uninterested after finding she hasn't had risqué self-shots leaked

Jessica Brown Findlay, in all seriousness, we're really, really sorry

Labels: celebrities, media coverage, mockery, stupidity

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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Victims today, undesirables tomorrow.

For the past few weeks I've been working my way steadily through a box set of The Wire, it having sat on my floor for at least four years, ever since I bought it shortly after the BBC had shown all 5 series back to back (I expect to get round to seeing what all the fuss is about Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones some time around 2018). I'm up to the final season, where McNulty, back on the booze and women and pissed off at the decision to shut down the operation against Marlo, "creates" a serial killer with the intention of getting the money taps turned back on by City Hall. Only until advised by Lester he can't even do that right, with neither the chiefs nor the media interested in his fictional slayer of homeless men.

Something highly similar went on with the reporting of the Asian sex gangs prosecuted over the last few years. Let's cut all the nonsense now and say the real reason why it was so many young, not even always teenage girls, predominately in care or vulnerable, were able to be exploited and abused for so long with so little done about it. It happened because almost no one, with the exception of a few of those in the system and the abusers themselves gave a damn about them. Whether they really were regarded as "white trash" by those abusers, when the closest the independent report by Alexis Jay (PDF) comes to describing any such direct insult from the men is one calling a 13-year-old a "white bitch" (pg. 140), is irrelevant when regardless of skin colour, these girls were treated as trash by everyone. They weren't important, and only are now as a grindstone for whichever political axe it is you want to sharpen.

Andrew Norfolk only got his story onto the front page of the Times in the first place by playing up (or rather, by his editors focussing on) the whole "political correctness" angle. Asian girls, black girls, white girls being abused by white men, black men, Asian men, who cares unless there's a celebrity or political figure among the latter or a good middle class kid gone off the rails among the former. Start saying nothing is being done though because everyone's too scared to admit it's predominantly Asian men abusing white girls, a problem within the Asian, if you want to be even more discriminatory the Muslim, community, and you've suddenly got a story the right-wing press is going to love.

And boy, do they. It doesn't matter either the report is for the most part just restating what we already knew. Both the Sun and the Mail scream this morning of the betrayals by the PC cowards/brigade. All but needless to say, the report itself doesn't so much as mention political correctness. What Alexis Jay does conclude comes in the six-page "Issues of Ethnicity" section of the report (pg. 91). She finds, predictably, that actual decision making was not affected by any fears of racism, with the "inquiry team confident ethnic issues did not influence professional decision-making in individual cases". There were however concerns expressed by some frontline staff as to whether their work could be interpreted as racist, and also awareness of, or a feeling of pressure from on high to play down the fact it was predominantly Asian men abusing white girls.

As Anna Raccoon writes, Rotherham isn't worse than any other instance of organised child sexual exploitation because the colour of the penises in this instance were brown rather than white. Jay goes on to comment on the research done by the UK Muslim Women's Network, which examined 35 cases and details almost exactly the same pattern of grooming and abuse as carried out in Rotherham, only in all these instances the victims were also Asian. The Home Affairs Select Committee heard evidence suggesting Asian victims were even less likely to come forward as they risked being ostracised by their own families and the whole community. As well as going against cultural norms, those in the community also feared the same retribution as visited or threatened against the victims if they went public with their concerns. With hindsight, Jay concludes, "it is clear that women and girls in the Pakistani community in Rotherham should have been encouraged and empowered by the authorities to speak out about perpetrators and their own experiences as victims of sexual exploitation, so often hidden from sight." Child abusers don't tend to select on the basis of skin colour; they do on the basis of how likely it is they are to get caught.

The problem wasn't with the council and culture at the most senior level being politically correct, rather that it was "bullying and macho" (pg. 101). As far back as 1998 the chief executive of the council said women officers weren't "readily accepted" by officers or members. One former senior officer described it as a "very grubby environment in which to work", while another said she was asked if she "wore a mask while having sex" (pg. 114). As late as October 2009 a senior officer not working in safeguarding is quoted as saying the town had "too many looked after children" and this accounted for a "significant part of the overspend". When the issue was raised by councillors, it was through mosques, while one senior office suggested some influential Pakistanti-heritage councillors had acted "as barriers" (pg. 93). "Traditional" channels of communication were used, and some councillors even demanded that social workers reveal where Pakistani-heritage women fleeing domestic violence were staying. The police meanwhile, whom the report describes as now having a "clear focus on prevention, protection, investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators" are described as in the early 2000s regarding the victims rather than the abusers as "undesirables" (pg. 69).

If there is a section of the report on shakier foundations, it's in the estimate of a potential 1,400 victims, the figure staring out from today's front pages. This isn't an estimate, rather an outright guess. Figures on caseloads were not collected, so the inquiry instead looked at case files, and lists of those known to children's social care (pg. 29). The inquiry read only 66 case files in total; it's unclear why it didn't read all those available to it, instead going for a random sample and drawing conclusions from that. As the section on victims also makes clear, not all of these are necessarily victims of grooming gangs; at least three of the cases are suggestive of abuse by individuals or within the family rather than groups of men working in concert (pgs. 41 and 42).

Undesirables. There in a single word is the case summed up and why for all the talk of "never again" it will happen again, as no doubt it's happening tonight. Demanding the sacking of the now police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire isn't going to achieve anything, except leaving the taxpayer with the bill for a by-election where only around 10% will turn out. The right will play the political correctness angle for all it's worth, point fingers at Labour and its rotten boroughs in the north, make subtler noises about the failings of multiculturalism, while the left and those like me will say it's about social breakdown and an underclass ignored by everyone until something terrible on a grand scale happens or there's another outbreak of rioting. They're fit only for gawping at on Jeremy Kyle and Benefits Street, for being a reason to pare back the welfare state, and the occasional short-lived passing frenzy. Social workers will go on struggling with a risk assessment culture that can't be applied to such hard cases, underfunded and overworked. Undesirables will become victims, then undesirables once more.

Labels: child abuse, media analysis, media coverage, political correctness, politics, racism, Rotherham abuse scandal

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Wednesday, August 13, 2014

"In America they really do mythologise people when they die."

The unexpected death of a celebrity always seems to bring out the absolute worst in the media, and it has to be said, the "new" media especially. The beyond dispute facts when it comes to Robin Williams are that he took his own life, and had by his own admission long battled addiction and depression. Everything else is conjecture and guesswork, completely unnecessary cruel and invasive guesswork at that.

There's a cycle that works in these cases somewhat like this. First, the shock of the news. Second, the reports from where fans have gathered and/or left tributes. Third, the tributes from those who actually knew the deceased. Fourth, the tributes from those who might have met the deceased once or maybe even twice, but nonetheless have been commissioned to write however many words on the person "they knew". Fifth comes the standard revisionism from the critics, most of whom a week back were probably slaughtering the deceased's last project, urged by their editors to look back and find something they can praise and so make clear what a genius the sadly departed was. Sixth, the tabloids start looking for why someone with seemingly everything to live for could do such a thing, and then in turn, the new media and people like me start responding to that.

And so on. It's not exactly what's happened since the news broke late on Monday night, but it's fairly close. Knowing Williams had reached the point where he no longer wanted to go on living, it makes it especially crass when those affecting to have been moved or inspired by him are even now still far more concerned with everything being about them. Who knows, perhaps Russell Brand had been thinking about Williams, although it seems highly unlikely considering the only person Russell Brand seems capable of thinking about is Russell Brand, as his ejaculation in the pages of the Graun amply demonstrates. Brand's prose is so overwrought, so self-referential, so solipsistic, only the Guardian could have ever thought it was worthy of being spunked over the front page. Brand's shtick is to appear to be aware of his own contradictions when in fact he's completely oblivious to them, vacuous to the very end. Yes, people with "masks less interesting than the one Robin Williams wore" are suffering, but please spare us the thought Williams' suicide tells us anything about their individual woes, or that being more vigilant, aware, grateful, "mindful" will help them.

The same goes for this specious notion genius, especially comic genius, goes hand in hand with a hidden internal sadness or heightened personal problems. Being extraordinary means there has to be something lurking beneath, making them just as human as the rest of us, right? Turn that idea around and it makes far more sense: that they're just like us, and just as susceptible to depressive illness and all the rest of it. Those who have it the worst are the ones who can't articulate the way they feel, not those of us blessed/cursed with being able to express ourselves either through speech or the written word, the ones who can't understand why it is they think the way they do.

This is why it comes across as patronising in the extreme when those with personal experience of mental illness speak as though they are fully representative of some imaginary community of the afflicted. Alastair Campbell doesn't do this in his sensitive piece, but his suitability for the role of "mental health ambassador" has always been dubious. Far more objectionable is Mary Hamilton's insistence that the amount of detail included in most media reporting on Williams' death is dangerous. I've written in the past about some genuinely thoughtless or worse journalism on suicide, and to compare that with this week's coverage is a nonsense. Treating the suicidally depressed as though they are too stupid to know how to hang themselves or cut their wrists is laughable; yes, Hamilton says, people can Google and get far more detailed instructions, but that interaction acts as check. Presumably going to actually get a belt, rope or knife wouldn't play the exact same role then.

Hamilton also implies suicide is not rational, and there are also never any good reasons to kill yourself. The suicidally depressed may not be thinking rationally, but to infer it is never rational, or it is never the least worst option is just as stigmatising as the people who say suicide is selfish or express opinions similar to those Campbell quotes Jeremy Hunt as doing. The NHS doesn't have the best record when it comes to mental health, hardly surprising when funding for treatment is always going to come second to the newest cancer drug proven to extend life by a few weeks, and the real terms cut isn't going to help matters, but provision is arguably better than it has ever been, as is understanding and sympathy, although it can still only get better. Claiming hyperbolically there is an acute crisis helps no one, especially those needing support who may well be put off even trying to get it. Just as trigger warnings are infantile, so is the idea newspaper front pages alone can make illness worse. Media taken as a whole, old and new, is something else.

Labels: depression, media coverage, media reporting, Robin Williams, Russell Brand, suicide

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Monday, July 21, 2014

Complicit in the lies of a serial offender.

Regular readers will know it takes a lot to stagger me. Cynicism comes easily, because it is so easy. Think the worst, and then you won't be let down come the inevitable. There are no heroes only humans, and we are flawed flesh and bone, all with our own prejudices, failings and traits.

Sometimes though you still can't help but be blown away by just how unbelievably stupid supposedly intelligent people are. In fact, in this instance stupid doesn't cover it. The only word that even comes close to accurately describing the Crown Prosecution Service's original decision to prosecute Tulisa Contostavlos is fuckwitted. A lawyer earning no doubt good money looked at the "investigation" carried out by this blog's favourite journalist, hopefully soon to be ex-journalist Mazher Mahmood, and felt, yeah, this isn't the most obvious example I've ever seen of entrapment, and told the CPS there was a realistic chance of conviction. The CPS then reviewed his decision, and went along with it. Then the judge, despite the defence making what has to be one of the most compelling applications for the case to be thrown out on the grounds Mahmood is a lying sack of shit, allowed it to proceed.

Only for Alistair McCreath to days later discharge the jury and find Contostavlos and her friend, Michael Coombs, who had already admitted supplying the cocaine after Mahmood asked Contostavlos to get some for him, not guilty. Why? Because Mahmood it seems put pressure on his driver, Alan Smith, to change his statement, having first told the police Contostavlos had spoken of her opposition to drugs as a family member was an addict as the pair talked in his car. At the legal arguments pre-trial Mahmood denied he spoke to the Smith at all, only for Contostavlos's QC, Jeremy Dein, to winkle the truth out of Mahmood under cross-examination last week. He had indeed discussed the statement with Smith, he just didn't have anything to do with him altering it.

Even now I can't begin to get my head round how Mahmood's latest and clearly for him most disastrous entrapping of a celebrity got to the point of being put before a jury. Back in June last year the People, whether through speaking to Contostavlos and/or her management or a disgruntled source at the Sun wrote up an almost completely accurate blow-by-blow account of how the former X-Factor judge was enticed by Mahmood, although it didn't explicitly state her arrest and the "hoax" were connected. They flew her to Las Vegas (either in first class or by private jet, according to whether you believe Mahmood or the People), telling her she was going to star in a Slumdog Millionaire-type film as a "bad girl" making the journey from London to India, possibly alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. As in previous stings, Contostavlos was plied with alcohol, her defence going so far as to say her drink was spiked on one occasion, before Mahmood then sprang the trap. Desperate to get the part, having been told Keira Knightley was also being considered for the role, she arranged for Coombs to supply Mahmood with his requested "white sweets".

Regardless of what you think about subterfuge by journalists, and the PCC code makes clear it can only be justified in the public interest, the person in this instance commissioning a crime is the hack, not the celebrity. Not only that, unlike in other instances where those involved step back at the last minute, the evidence their target is willing to go along with their request acquired, Mahmood's drug stings have nearly always involved the actual supply of the banned substance. By accepting such a level of skulduggery was permissible, despite the relatively slight nature of the offences committed, both the police and the CPS became complicit in Mahmood's abuse of power, not to forget lies. Nor is this anything like the first time they've been embarrassed by Mahmood's mendacity and the Murdoch tabloid stable's hyperbolics: the Victoria Beckham "kidnap plot" trial collapsed after it emerged the key witness had been paid, while the "red mercury" case ended with all the defendants acquitted.

Indeed, yet again the court system gave in to Mahmood's bullshit, the myth of the man as tabloid investigator extraordinaire. He gave his evidence from behind a screen, to both protect him from enemies and so as not to give away his identity to those he might yet seek to stitch up. No matter that his visage has been available online for years now, or that, err, his victims know all too well what he looks like. Also irrelevant is just how petty and cliche the drug dealer expose is; it's one thing to try and show corruption in sport, although Mahmood failed to do even that with John Higgins, it's another to get a pop star to show they know someone who can get drugs. I mean, who knew they got up to such things? It's not as though most of us have acquaintances whom dabble in illicit substances, and if tempted in the same way as Contostavlos was could just as easily find ourselves helping out a new VIP friend, clearly we're meant to regard this as a terrible indictment of the morals of our heroes. What will the kids who look up to her think? Nor do certain sections of the media encourage ambition and aspiration whatever the cost, oh no.

As well as being suspended by the Sun, Mahmood now faces the possibility of a perjury charge, another former News of the Screws hack accused of lying under oath. This entire affair also gives the lie to the idea Leveson changed anything: still a Murdoch paper was prepared to do whatever it took just to catch out a jumped-up celeb. How delicious then that someone like Tulisa (and admittedly her legal team) should be the one to finally pin the fake sheikh down. This time, surely, there can be no way back for Mazher Mahmood.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Crown Prosecution Service, dark arts, entrapment, Mazher Mahmood, media analysis, media coverage, News of the World, Scum-watch, Sun on Sunday, Sun-watch, tabloid analysis, Tulisa Contostavlos

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The king of sleaze, abandoned by the sleaze merchants he worked with.

And so the fleas are parting company with the dying rat. If there's one thing to be said for the various celebrities deserting Max Clifford now he's been found guilty of sexually assaulting four young women, one of whom was only 15 at the time, at least they're being open and honest about having paired up with the man now being described as the king of sleaze by the very sleaze merchants he worked hand in glove with.

Clifford's downfall signifies an end of an era for British journalism just as much as the closure of the News of the World did. Along with Murdoch himself and Kelvin MacKenzie, Clifford must rank among the most significant figures of the post-Sun tabloid world, and also as one of those chiefly responsible for the race to the gutter. Where the sex scandal had once been mainly confined to the Sundays, Murdoch's relaunched Sun served it up on a daily basis. By the time MacKenzie took over as editor in 1981, Clifford was starting to build his empire, the famous headline "FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER" the end result of his handiwork. As was also typical of many Clifford-brokered stories, it wasn't true. Nor was he anything but brazen when caught out, as Roy Greenslade relates of another story sold to the Sun during the period. Clifford had presented a man who claimed to have slept with a soap actress, only for her lawyers to quickly discover the supposed lover was in fact gay. "Some days he's gay, some days he's straight. This happened on straight day," was Clifford's response.

When it's someone's job to tell lies, to deceive people, whether they be tabloid journalists and in turn the general public, and when they are also so open about doing so, it raises the obvious question of whether you can believe anything they say. Did he really hold sex parties for the best part of two decades, as he claimed in his autobiography, where household names including Diana Dors were among those attending? During the trial he quite happily accepted being described as the "ringmaster" at the shindigs, a role he "liked to have" in life in general. In an interview at the time the book was released he told Carole Cadwalladr to him it was "another sport" and also that he had been "greedy". Perhaps as he has so often Clifford was simply embellishing a fact to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from fiction: Dors told the News of the World of sex parties hosted by her first husband Dennis Hamilton, parties that would have taken place when Clifford had just entered his teenage years. Whether later claims in her own autobiography of further such soirees are any more reliable is open to question.

If we do take Clifford's word for it, then around the point he got out of the car keys in the bowl game he reached the peak of his powers. He represented Mohamed Fayed, sold the story of Antonia De Sancha's affair with David Mellor, and although almost forgotten now in comparison to Mellor shagging in his Chelsea strip (as invented as John Major tucking his shirt into his underpants was), entered into a "partnership" with Mandy Allwood, the woman pregnant with octuplets. Clifford negotiated a deal with the News of the World where the amount paid for the exclusive rights to the story would increase for each baby born. The contract was written in spite of advice from doctors to abort some of the foetuses to give the others a better chance of survival. Allwood went into labour after 19 weeks; three days later all eight babies were dead. She would later claim Clifford had told the press about the location of the funeral despite her asking for it to be kept private.

With the demise of the Screws and the switch of so much celebrity gossip to the instant world of social media, Clifford's grip on the biggest clients also seemed to have slipped. He kept Simon Cowell, but most others seem to have went elsewhere. Not that this affected what Piers Morgan once described as Clifford's "get out of all jail card". Cadwalladr in her piece wrote of the double life Clifford had been leading at the time, in a relationship with his PA, who was married, just not to him. The only hint of this in the press came in the Mail, in a diary item. No journalist or paper wanted to take the risk of offending such a major source by going any bigger on his hypocrisy. Grace Dent in the Independent suggests "rumours" had circulated about Clifford's "approach" to young women, but if there had been any wider investigation than just that into his past then it most certainly didn't get into print.

Similarly to how the wider media failed to expose Jimmy Savile while he was alive despite it seeming as though almost everyone in Fleet Street and at the BBC had heard the whispers, it was left to the women themselves to find the strength to go to the police and give their accounts of how a man who subsequently wielded such power abused them. These same papers are the ones demanding to know why the then Liberal party didn't do more to investigate the accusations made against Cyril Smith, despite the fact that at the time they themselves didn't follow up the allegations in the Rochdale Alternative Paper, repeated by Private Eye. Such cover-ups are only possible when the self-styled defenders of freedom also fail to investigate without favour. Anyone expecting some humility, even introspection from the papers without whom Clifford couldn't have operated were always likely to be disappointed, but as so often, their silence on the role they played is deafening.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, Max Clifford, media analysis, media coverage, public relations, tabloid hypocrisy

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4/29/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

No sympathy for the devil.

There's only one question editors should ask themselves when offered photographs of a famous figure who has just been told the most shattering news: how would I like to be splashed across the next morning's papers, grief etched across my face, in what ought to be regardless of it happening in a public place, an intensely private moment?

If they would truly answer that reporting the level of grief outweighs the considerations of not intruding into it, something that the PCC code makes clear should always be approached sensitively, then they should make that case themselves. More likely is as is so often the case, should any paper even dream of reporting on the private life of a fellow editor, there would soon be phone calls a plenty and threats flying, with both sides usually backing down. Hence why the tabloids didn't report on Rebekah Wade (as was) splitting up with Ross Kemp, let alone the employment tribunal finding that Andy Coulson bullied and unfairly dismissed Matt Driscoll from the News of the World.

However Paul Dacre and the editors at the Mirror and Star defended it to themselves, they must have seen just how distasteful it was to fill all but their entire front pages with the image of Mick Jagger in such obvious distress. The Sun, perhaps stung by the criticism it received following the death of Reeva Steenkamp, having decided an image of the model appearing to undo her bikini top was the best way to illustrate the news, opted for a far smaller inset of the image used by the others, still obviously objectionable but not on the same scale as using it to fill the page.

It does of course raises questions about what now is beyond the pale. The extremely long lens shots of the People's Kate sunbathing topless were, but the Sun decided Harry buck-ass naked in a hotel wasn't. The tabloids had an attack of the vapours when an Italian documentary used the images of Princess Diana lying mortally injured in the back of the Mercedes, despite having arguably contributed to the crash, yet don't think an ashed faced rock star learning of a personal tragedy deserves the same protection. This isn't about Leveson, as you shouldn't need a judge to tell you to feel the most basic compassion and human empathy. It's about a tabloid press that has never set itself a boundary it hasn't subsequently broken.

Labels: Daily Mail-watch, Mail-watch, media analysis, media coverage, PCC, privacy, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

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3/18/2014 09:25:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Farage the traduced?

Owen Jones, bless his little cotton socks, thinks it's deeply unfair for poor old Nigel Farage to be subject to such slander as the allegation from former UKIPs MEP Nikki Sinclaire that as well as paying his wife out of EU taxpayers' money, his (former?) mistress Annabelle Fuller is also employed courtesy of the public purse. Jones might have something of a point if this was an allegation being made purely by a newspaper, therefore bringing into question exactly where it had come from and why it's being pushed now, but as it came from the floor at Strasbourg you can't exactly blame the press in this instance from following it up. Abuse of the EU parliament's equivalent of privilege or not, as well as there being plenty of reasons to doubt Sinclaire, the media would have covered any similar allegations made in such circumstances against a major politician, unless it was completely unbelievable and/or quick to find false.

Add in the misuse of expenses angle and there wasn't any reason not to cover it, although let's be honest, it's not a front page story as the Sun and Mail decided. Jones goes to say that it is permissible if the allegation is an example of hypocrisy, which as we know has been used in the past to justify a multitude of irrelevancies coming to light. This said, much as the private life of a politician should be irrelevant to how they do their job as long as it isn't having a direct impact on their ability to do so, as potential abuse of expenses is involved in this instance, and as Farage scaremongered completely irresponsibly last year over the lifting of controls on Romanians and Bulgarians last year, I'm finding it really hard to have much sympathy for him. As UKIP has also opposed gay marriage for no other reason than the fact Cameron supported it, in spite of being a supposed libertarian party, there arguably is a case for holding those against equality to account when it comes to their views on the sanctity of the institution.

Jones also insists that such tactics, if there are indeed such tactics, won't work. This is questionable: much as the UKIPs make it something of a badge of honour that they try and destroy the EU from the inside, as we saw with the Westminster expenses scandal genuine fraud or abuse does cause outrage. It might be in this case that the allegations are transparently false, but along with the rest of the current press against the UKIPs, it could well have an effect. It has to remembered that UKIP essentially is Farage: when he stepped down as leader the party faltered dramatically. It's also more that UKIP is less a political party and more a feeling, where Europe and immigration collide with general discontent at modern life. Unpicking that isn't easy, and even if UKIP does collapse post-2015, if say it fails to win a Westminster seat, someone or something is likely to take its place.

Labels: European Union, media analysis, media coverage, Nigel Farage, Owen Jones, politics, UKIP

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3/13/2014 09:40:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Obsolete

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The desperately awful case of Poppi Worthington.

Friday, November 13, 2015

If he hadn't existed, we would have invented him. Oh, we did anyway.

Monday, March 02, 2015

Of Savile and Emwazi: the "monsters" in our midst.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

The numbers game and demanding something must be done.

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

By their works they shall be judged.

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Perpetuating abuse?

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Of walking abortion.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Y'all are breaking the first two rules of Fight Club.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Victims today, undesirables tomorrow.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

"In America they really do mythologise people when they die."

Monday, July 21, 2014

Complicit in the lies of a serial offender.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The king of sleaze, abandoned by the sleaze merchants he worked with.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

No sympathy for the devil.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Farage the traduced?

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