I'm glad that something odd has come out of the robust defence of Christopher Jefferies by his soilcitor and that two of the newspapers involved are to suffer financially.
It wasn't just the press that were guilty of making up stories, I saw comments on messageboards about how he was a weirdo based simply on his like of poetry and his hairstyle. What made the situation even worse, if that's possible, was the reaction of the Chairman of the PCC, who has by the way resigned this afternoon, who seemed to imply that there was nothing wrong in the actions of the press because they were in the tradition of a 'robust press' - whatever that is. The traditional media outlets are struggling to compete with the Internet. We are all now able to publish our thoughts and discuss them with people on the other side of the world, not wait until the following morning to pick up a paper on the way to work to read yesterdays news.
Reading some of the comments of journalists they seem to hate the idea that the general public can discuss things without Fleet Street being responsible for setting the agenda, there is also the popular misconception that both blogging and posting on messageboards or 'social networks' is somehow free of responsibility. It's not. Whilst the Internet may be left to police itself to a certain degree the laws of the land still determine what we can and can't write, once we click on 'Publish Post' the words we have typed cease to be private and can be read by anybody.
For Christopher Jefferies the only crimes he was guilty of were being different and for living a life beyond the M25 and therefore beyond the understanding of our wonderful media. As I have said before freedom of speech comes with a responsibility and at least the financial penalties imposed in this case and the subsequent adverse publicity means that The Daily Mirror and The Sun cannot get away with the usual mealy mouthed apology at the bottom of page 27 beneath the adverts for sexlines.
3 comments:
Yes, vilification and witch hunt describe it perfectly; the fact the EIGHT newspapers are having to pay shows the extent of the mania. My family and I followed the whole thing with a sense of "association" in that we were in Bristol over Christmas at my brother's place a few minutes walk from all the scenes of the 'case', my nice and nephew attend Clifton College and knew of him (not personally) were in the same Tesco Express the same day etc etc...all a bit wierd. The scary thing is that in other ages/places/situations etc Christopher would have been lynched/burnt long before anything else was thought about....I'm mean, look at his wierd hair! Fucking unbelievable.
Yes, in media land wierdo = guilty!
I, too, am glad the newspapers concerned have been made to pay for their conduct.
You#re both right - good link to the story Span!
I felt really sorry for him and the media frenzy when some of his ex-students called him 'weird' - I mean hasn't everybody thought at least one of their ex-teachers weird, simply because they held different views at a time when as teenagers we were trying to be 'different'.
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