17.08.1995

Poisonous press

FEW OTHER organisations can get away with downright lies and outright distortion aimed at destroying reputations and lives in quite the way the national press can.

Once they target you, with their ability to bend any fact to face the opposite direction, your fate can be well and truly sealed.

Whipped to a frenzy the tabloid readership can be led to murderous intent. Witness the crowds attacking the vans with the youngsters who killed the tragic James Bulger. Left to their own devices the crowd would literally have pulled the children from the vehicle and torn them to bits, presumably to teach the wretched children how civilised adults behave.

The Independent on Sunday has just been having another go at Arthur Scargill under the headline “Scargill wins pay deal for himself”, claiming he negotiated a pay rise for himself while the membership haven’t achieved anything.

In fact Arthur has introduced a new pay formula that actually reduces his level of income. The newspaper cheerfully acknowledges a statement from Scargill, “I have received no increases in pay since 1991 and have given a written instruction that I will not accept any increase until and unless my members receive an increase in their pay.” 

Further down the dung heap we come to last Wednesday’s Today headline “Child Sex Man.” Now any reading of the headline would lead you to assume that this man either had sex with children or was trying to have sex with children. Was he? Nope, he was a senior social worker who had made the observation that some children under the legal age of sexual consent do consent to sex. Any adult who engages in such consensual sex, while not being condoned, should be considered differently from someone dragging the kid into the bushes and raping them.

A reasonable opinion one might think. Not so: the wild eyed evangelical Today  managed to get four full pages out of the observation and is now running a campaign to have the hapless employee of Westminster Council witch hunted, sacked and god knows - if they had their way - his tongue cut out.

But hang on a minute. Wasn’t Today one of the papers who campaigned that children of 10 such as those who killed James Bulger should stand trial as adults because a person of 10 could fully consent to murder? So we conclude from this that sex is an action far more difficult to handle than murder.

Dave Douglass