Firefly, you don’t seem to be aware that I’m entitled (as are you!) to criticise anyone who is in the public eye, including journalists (I would have thought that was obvious!) what exactly is it that I said about Liz Hull that has upset you?
Let me then be really careful and precise with my words on LH: I think she’s a dreadful hack who uses the parents as a human shield so she can continue profiting off of their grief without needing to concern herself with inconvenient matters like accurate reporting or the public’s right to hold the justice system to account. I think her (and Caroline Cheetham’s) podcast is a nasty little rat’s nest of direct manipulation, structural dependence, and journalistic corruption hiding behind a pair of sickly sweet voices that make me want to gargle tequila for breakfast.
Before you get your knickers in a twist over the words “journalistic corruption” know that it is a fact that Caroline Cheetham’s media company was being paid by Cheshire Police while the trial was ongoing. This IS collusion and structural dependence. It is massively against journalistic ethics. I wouldn’t mind if they were running some kind of lifestyle flimflam, but they are not. They are flinging the public’s right to scrutinise justice into the fire by shilling for CP, hiding behind the parents to do it, AND getting paid for it?! This is such harmful low behaviour that I could honestly go a lot further.
It’s really interesting to me that you still do not see how (or apparently even where) you have also been strong in your words, if not more so. Here’s a clue: I wasn’t talking about the expert panel.
“Nick Johnson seems to get away lightly in all this-no idea why!”
I’ve told you why. He’s just a barrister doing what barristers do. He’s not the superhero for your side of the debate. It’s simply his job under the adversarial system (which for better or worse is what we currently have) to represent the case for the prosecution to the best of his abilities within the bounds of the law. He will have been appointed via the CPS Advocate Panel (a structured roster of approved counsel). Once on the panel, a barrister can’t simply decline briefs because they dislike a case or think it’s weak. They need a recognised reason (conflict of interest, lack of expertise, diary clash, etc). He just did his job. As I say, I do not approve of all of his lines of questioning, which veered into outright misogyny at times IMO, but on the whole he was just doing his job and he did do it well. He is a very good barrister. There are good public interest reasons why the CPS Advocate Panel functions like this, just as the ‘cab rank rule’ for defence barristers is also in the public interest.
Liz Hull, on the other hand, is a bad journalist who is actively engaged in corruption for access and profit at the expense of the public’s right to open justice and to scrutinise and hold justice (including the policing system) to account.
“It's everyone else you seem to hate-consultants, police, journalists who reported on the trial...”
Yes. Because those people behaved very poorly in ways that actively harm the public’s right to scrutinise or access justice.
Nick Johnson just did what a Prosecution Barrister does.
One of these things is really, really, bad. The other is a necessary element of the current legal system. Does that make it clearer?
“But you missed out most of the reasons for why they started investigating-now who is arguing in bad faith!”
No. No, I didn’t. All of those points have been addressed over and over again across these threads. I don’t want to clog the thread up with more of the same but I’m happy to DM if you want.