To think the media need to be careful...

[apairofjeanstharfitjustright]

Whatever Philip Schofield has done, I think the media need to be careful, look what happened to Caroline Flack. Completely vilified in the press and the same is happening to Philip.

Regardless of what I think of him, I think the media need to back off and tread lightly here.

AIBU or do you think he deserves all of this?

And I suspect that if PS's young 'friend' had been female, there would have been far less media attention.

If he met a girl when she was 11, groomed her and then had a sexual relationship when she was only just of legal age whilst married I bet people would actually be more disgusted.

He won't end his own life, he's far too much of a narcissist.

Categorically no doubt about it. PS has gotten away with far more, because people are terrified of having ‘homophobia’ levelled at them.

What criminal act?

What age does this apply from? 12? 14? 16? 8?

There are laws about age of consent and what constitutes grooming and the adult has a responsibility to not start a relationship with a child. Because a child fancies you, likes the attention and engages willingly in an emotional or physical relationship is not ok at all.

Some women have an orgasm when raped, some victims of child sex abuse attest to liking the relationship and the physical part of it before they realise it's not in the slightest bit ok.

The young man in question was groomed and if it was consensual it's still not ok. Do you think Phil would have got a super injunction if what he did wasn't utterly deplorable.

It’s easy to excuse the media when they’re going after someone you believe to be in the wrong.

People defend the media over the treatment of Philip Schofield because they have their own opinions of him. But let’s be honest, they don’t only go after peope who have done wrong do they? They go after people they don’t like, and the public help them by buying their trash.

Look at how the press, and MN have gone after Harry and Meggan. Whether you like them or not (and please let’s not make this a H&M thread), they haven’t done anything which warrants the amount of hatred which has been thrown their way. They absolutely haven’t.

Look at how the press went after the McCanns after they’d built them up, done everything to publicise MM’s disappearance, and then decided that the McCanns must be involved, so much so that they’ve successfully been sued more than once.

Cliff Richard, Christopher Jeffrey’s, All innocent people but no less bile than towards PS and Caroline Flack who incidentally was a nasty piece of work in her own right.

The media, and especially social media, need to take a step back from all this, because the reality is that any one of us could become public knowledge and subject to hatred and abuse if we hang out online.

Did Cheryl Cole get this level of bad publicity when she got with Liam Payne who she met, coached and judged when he was 14? They got together when he was early twenties but they still met when he was a kid. Why hasn't she been vilified?

My argument isnt whether PS has done wrong - he quite clearly has. But nonetheless I hate the British gutter press with a passion. They ruthlessly ruin lives and in some cases cost lives at their whim and their own bias. And people are dumb enough to believe everything they read is fact.

So the world/media goes after Philip Schofield yet continues to praise and reward Noel Radford- a peedo who made a child pregnant and then went on to have many many more children with said child?

Didn't Cheryl Cole meet Liam Payne when he was a child then subsequently have a relationship then child? I wonder why that went under the radar unlike this

Cheryl Cole was different due to the power balance. When they met back up Liam was richer and far more successful than Cheryl who was coming towards the end of her career. The age difference is also far less.
Cheryl wasn’t Liam’s boss. If Simon Cowell had the relationship with Liam, and then terminated his contract when he got bored, it’d be a similar level of disgust.

I agree that sounds like grooming. Have you considered reporting this to the police? Someone needs to.

I’m guessing that you’re being sarcastic? Otherwise this is hillarious. I mean someoe on mn lays out the circumstances and you question whether they’ve reported to the police because “someone needs to”? You think nobody ever has?

you think the police are going to listen to a random stranger who says “he did x and y, and I know because I read it on social media.”?

No I’m not. I honestly believe some times things like these are ignored until someone actually reports it.

That's seriously the best response you've got?

Honestly, sarcastic responses are tiresome at the best of times and just downright fucking ridiculous when they are used to attempt to justify any form of abuse.

You might as well say you support what he has done and be done with it.

I can't be bothered to interact with people that enable abusers to carry on by justifying their behaviour.

Pls see my message before at 21.55.

Apparently her parents considered reporting him to the Police and sought legal advice as he was just 18 when got pregnant and she was 13. The advice was not to as it could put her in a position where she ran away with him and they could lose their daughter entirely.

Times have changed though and I'm hoping people realise more and more how abusive and wrong these sorts of relationships are, however there are many Schofield threads on here and many, many many posters who are eager to justify his behaviour and defend him.

Turns out we learn very little from history

Nobody actually knows that he has done anything illegal, from what I can see.

I think the police are aware? He’s had a super-injunction out??

Bloody hell…. 😳

There's already Police involvement hence gagging order, which conveniently lifted the day Phillip decided to leave ITV altogether, step down from hosting the NTAs and sell his version of events to the press that he thinks all of what he did with MM from the age of 10 to 19 was perfectly acceptable because the relationship started when MM was older (17).

He is a predator, a child groomer and also covered up his brothers acts of paedophilia.

But yeah, nice guy by all accounts.

Is that how you view everything in life? Legal and not legal? If it's legal its acceptable?

What would you do if your 10 year old son was cherry picked from stage school by Phillip Schofield and he befriended him then followed him on social media when he was 13? Then got him a tv job and started a relationship with him at 17?

Accept this relationship because 17 is legal and ignore the previous years grooming?!

Bearing in mind the years building upto this involved lots of contact from Phillip to a child on the pretence of him helping with his career, which he incidentally then got him moved off this morning and slapped a gagging order on him too.

I suspect that perhaps you have misconstrued my post somewhat. Nowhere do I condone PS's actions (or those of others you describe as predators). I merely mention that the media have a tendency to get their teeth into some and not others.

I despise the tabloids and the way they witch hunt people, but I actually think Schofield has gotten off incredibly lightly, and I would not consider the current newspaper articles to be a "witch hunt."

The newspapers knew and covered up for him for years, maybe even decades. He's had years and years of extremely positive press coverage which helped him to build his TV brand and make pots and pots of money, and also helped him to get away with grooming boys and using his TV power to engage in grooming.

Hell, he brought a 20yr old runner as his date to the NTAs and even allowed him to get up on stage to accept the award with the rest of the stars (absolutely unprecedented) safe in the knowledge that he could flaunt his affair on live TV and in front of the entire TV industry without the press saying anything about it.

For decades the press have been extremely kind to him and looked the other way, while the press have destroyed and targeted other people (especially women) for basically no reason.

Even when he chose to come out as a way of handling the allegations, the tabloid narrative as "Brave Phil!" rather than anything negative.

And now they've discovered that he flat out lied to them, they're writing articles that are still nowhere near as vicious or biased (or as frequent) as the articles written about Meghan or Amy Winehouse or lots of other people. The Daily Mail article has nearly all positive comments defending Schofield, and the wording of the article could have been much worse.

The comparisons with Meghan for example. Meghan had a headline linking her to war, famine and drought just because she liked avocados, and had her every move scrutinised in the most critical light (eg she wore black, there'd be headlines acting like she punched the Queen in the face by disrespecting royal etiquette banning royal women from wearing black, then Kate would wear black, there'd be headlines praising her amazing chic fashion sense).

A couple of factual articles simply is not a witch hunt.

I’m not excusing violence. I’m objecting to the aligning of CF with PS. Both totally different people in different circumstances.

Both abusers , just different sorts of abuse.