Trial by media circus

[Maatandosiris]

The first thing to say is anyone who has committed rape absolutely needs to be brought to justice. The criminal
justice system needs to become more effective in protecting all victims of crime.

However, AIBU unreasonable to think that this weekends story about RB has been sinister for many other reasons, none of which are to do with RB.

Firstly the SM posts whipping people into a frenzy of some big reveal like some secret album release. Clues planted through various carefully placed posts, giving just enough detail to let people work things out (plus making people suggest other names) . It was an absolute circus, in the case of rape it turned accusations of serious crime into entertainment, no thought how anyone would be affected, whether ultimately guilty or innocent (maybe c4/The Times were trying to get new stories). Extremely bad taste at one end of the spectrum, devastating for innocent people at the other.

The ultimate agenda of both The Sunday Times and C4 is to make money. That’s it, neither is set up as the states arm of justice. There’s no inbuilt checks and balances. Yet somehow they are allowed to name an individual, accuse them of crimes (and effectively say they are guilty) without any of the safeguards and checks and balances of the criminal justice system applying.

People have lost all sense of justice. We have a man accused of something, an hour and a half of heavily hyped TV which holds some accusations but mainly a character assassination, The Sunday Times probably selling many more copies/getting many more subscribers with more of the sane one sided accusations.

Even on Mumsnet we have people already calling him a Rapist, people feeding into the frenzy of “he’s a creep”, “he’s a sex pest” etc etc. in other words, convicting him in their minds before this has gone anywhere near a court or jury.

How will this ever now be a fair trial? How will they find a jury who can 100% not have their views affected by this whole circus? If he is guilty will there ever be a safe conviction, how can we be confident that real justice has been done? What’s the risk of any conviction being overturned? This is not in the interests of either the alleged victim or the alleged perpetrator.

Questions are circulating all over SM as to the agendas at play. It’s fairly clear that the Sunday Times has been searching out victims. What were they saying to these people? What promises have been made?

if a crime has been committed this should be with the criminal justice system not Saturday night prime time TV with an associated heavy advertising campaign.

Im not sure whether RB is guilty or innocent, but that’s not what this post is about. AIBU to think that the way this witch hunt (which is what it is regardless of whether RB sinks or floats) is abhorrent and flies in the face of justice and that this has far wider and scarier implications for society than just this case. Who or what is next?

I'm quite surprised Ickey hasn't been mettood. Read something online about him from an ex that was none too flattering.

Felding will be next.

This is as true about any high profile case - Lucy Letby, Harold Shipman, Weinstein, Depp…

In the latter case, he lost when the case was decided by a judge, a person used to evaluating evidence and understanding the law intimately. He was found not guilty of some (not all) of the charges when tried by a jury that was not sequestered nor asked to surrender their phones. Coincidentally, the hashtag ‘justiceforjohnny’ was seen 19 billion times during the trial.

There is no such thing as a fair trial in the age of instant media - especially thanks to the rise of completely unregulated social media where lies spread like wildfire.

But you can be very sure that the Times & Dispatches dotted every i and crossed every t before it was published.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain why they don’t believe the doc / article is telling the truth, yet they believe videos they see on social media.

Also, RB will have been aware of the investigation for a long time. They just wouldn’t have given him a dossier of the contents until it was all checked and double checked, then triple checked. At that point (8 days out from transmission), he had the opportunity to address the accusations.

I’m really surprised at how little people understand of the way the media and criminal justice system works.

Everything is about money. Yes, media outlets are for profit - so they will only put the huge resources needed for a long running investigation like this into something they feel is worthwhile.

The reverse is true for the police / CPS - they have limited resources so can’t investigate every crime thoroughly. So crimes like rape where there are supposed ‘grey areas’ or limited witnesses or inherent biases in juries (the notion of the perfect victim, the idea that the victim didn’t do enough to protect themselves or invited it) are rarely pursued.

It’s all about money.

But in a system where the bottom line is all that matters, do you believe the women who are getting no money - because they won’t be paid for any media appearances or testimony - or do you believe the man who makes millions from videos that will only be broadcast on social media where there are no regulations, professional ethics or legal checks?

Sexual assault (forced BJ), emotional abuse and abuse of power are not fluff.

Does anyone think Jimmy Saville was innocent?

As far as I can tell there were 2 accounts of rape in the documentary, the rest was fluff. I doubt those accounts would have him convicted tbh, because it's a terrible state of affairs, hardly anyone is convicted of rape. I believe them but tbh it's all a storm in a teacup, will be forgotten in 2 weeks

@Calistano and yet the ‘fluff’ (I didn’t notice any fluff but did hear accounts of abuse) adds to the legitimacy of the rape claims. Sadly the courts don’t accept ‘fluff’ as evidence either. They bloody should. Sexual crimes are often a character trial for both the accuser and the accused, the media didn’t invent this basis.

You need evidence, he was there, you need evidence the deed occurred and you need evidence there was no consent

@Drfosters so in a case that is word vs word what would you accept as evidence? If we accept that tangible evidence is an impossibility in the majority of cases then we are faced with a choice - do we find a way to evidence or do we essentially deny that these crimes ever take place?

I believe them but tbh it's all a storm in a teacup, will be forgotten in 2 weeks.

Nice. No wonder women don't report rapes with this shitty attitude still around.

Oral rape is a legitimate crime in itself. It’s not assault.

The difference is its very hard to try and defend a nonce, because no one wants to be seen as one.

Women and teen girls tho are fair fucking game in society though. Those who defend are the type to abuse or be abused.

@Iamnotastick careful now, JS never stood trial and had a court confirm he was a nonce to his face. The dead can’t defend themselves so I don’t think any findings are conclusive.

(very heavily on the sarcasm in case it’s missed)

Sarcasm detected and appreciated.

I don’t have sufficient evidence to decide who I believe.

I dare say the BBC would have claimed Martin Bashier dotted all the Is and crossed the ts., that lawyers went through it all with a fine tooth comb. In the current case lawyers will have been through it all with a fine tooth comb to see if there was a risk they could be sued, They will not have been deciding whether he was guilty (nor could they) lawyers work for their clients.they will protect the interests of those paying the bill.

Ultimately though it’s not about who I do and don’t believe. At the end of the day I believe in justice which society agrees should be administered through the justice system.

There is a great, long standing position that the mass
media is the new church. Do we want justice administered by the church or by the state?

Innocent until proven guilty is about the exercise of state power. It's never meant that somebody's reputation has to be somehow untarnished by allegations unless they're convicted.

We all know only about 3% of rapes ever result in a conviction, with a rich celebrity the likelihood is even less. Publication of a lot of allegations at once like this helps to give a fuller picture. As with Saville.

This investigation will have been absolutely rigorously challenged by in-house lawyers and only allegations backed up with sound evidence published - I'm sure there was a huge stack of information that didn't make it into print. If Russell Brand wanted to sue, he could do so.

Not one person on this thread is advocating direct action against Brand which would be the alternative to the established judicial system.

You seem happy to accept inequality when it favours the defendant. Brand vs 16 year old reporting oral rape would not have been even or fair.

I'm not sure why you keep banging on about "the rule of law". The UK has libel laws. Rusty could instruct his lawyers to sue. He is certainly not short of a crust. My understanding is his lawyers were presented with the accusations and the evidence collected prior to publication and yet made no response whatsoever.

“You seem happy to accept inequality when it favours the defendant. Brand vs 16 year old reporting oral rape would not be even or fair.”

Where have I ever stated that? I have specifically commented (over and over) I cannot comment on the guilt or not of RB and that is not what the thread is about.

“Not one person on this thread is advocating direct action against Brand which would be the alternative to the established judicial system. “ Yet people state accusations as fact - deciding what is fact and whether there is guilt of a specific crime is what the justice system is there for. Regarding consequences- the BBC was advocating for the removal of income sources today

Trial by media circus or whistleblowing?

Do we disallow whistleblowers?

Rotherham wasn't exposed till the press got hold of it.

There's been many similar cases.

It's not just Brand; it's the system post yewtree. The system still doesn't work Ffs.

Apparently a whistleblower involved with Weinstein is on world at one R4 soon.

He ... held her mouth open by force and repeatedly spat in it

I know it's only one detail and hasn't been tried in court, but regarding the actual act just what sort of a creature would anyone have to be to do something like this?? And whether Brand or another, what sort of institution would offer them such a public platform?

There is no such thing as a fair trial in the age of instant media - especially thanks to the rise of completely unregulated social media where lies spread like wildfire

And that's what worries me. Predictably nobody commented on the likelihood of any defence insisting Brand couldn't now have a fair trial, but sadly that's what we may be looking at

Finally, what happened to speculation supposedly being disallowed on here, as HQ have posted on various other threads? From the mass excited outpouring of initials before the news broke to this very thread with suggestions of who'll be next, it just goes on and on

Well, I have been specifically commenting on the criminal justice system not civil law.

on a case of word versus word then you have to make a judgement call. But if RB were to respond to the allegation specifically denying it all and giving a completely different, but equally believable account, then there would be reasonable doubt. It doesn’t mean you don’t necessarily believe the victim but there is enough doubt that you would not feel comfortable convicting. If you have ever done jury service, it is taken very seriously. You end up analysing tiny bits of evidence and people end up arguing back and forth. Cases where it is one person’s word against another I expect result in more acquittals as the bar is so high as No one genuinely knows what went down and unless you have strong coronation you are putting someone’s liberty at risk on a belief.

I appreciate other people feel differently about this - there is a split between morality and legality and people are very much split down the line on it.

I think this is a very good question, whistleblowing normally has an established way to do that. At the very least it would have been more appropriate to whistle blow to the police rather than a journalist. However, the corporations involved should have had far better systems in place to report this kind of thing. To me, it is the media who need really investigating we pay for it either directly or indirectly. We need to question who controls it, what protections are in place, what agendas are being played out, how this affects what we are shown. That would have been more suitable for investigation (although, of course, to a certain extent that would be self review)

The allegations against RB properly lie only with the criminal justice system not privately owned corporations. Are we looking to privatise justice?

Your entire premise is that the alleged victims should have gone to the police and let justice take its course.

You don't agree that the documentary should have been broadcast as it has generated further media discussion and jeopardised Brand's access to a fair trial.

That's shutting down legitimate sharing of information. Shutting down the ability of the vulnerable to access even a tiny proportion of support that a multimillionaire, social media 'guru' has at his fingertips. They never even started out with the hope of a fair path to justice.

Brand can sue anyone he thinks has libeled him. But you are not happy with that. You don't want that discussion to take place at all.

If you have ever done jury service, it is taken very seriously

I have. Twice. It is taken seriously but it also undeniably comes down to ‘feeling’ in scenarios. I’ve seen it happen.

Cases where it is one person’s word against another I expect result in more acquittals as the bar is so high as No one genuinely knows what went down and unless you have strong coronation you are putting someone’s liberty at risk on a belief

okay, so now we’re left with a world where we know beyond doubt that these crimes take place, with alarming regularity, but judgements of character (which isn’t an ability we encourage people to ignore in any other setting) have to be put aside because we can’t agree on how this is something that can be evidenced?

I don’t subscribe to that at all. Utilise character references, victim impact statements (which would be allowed after verdict), psychologist reports and allow the judge to direct the jury to actually use their judgement of the person despite physical evidence.

If we accept that tangible evidence is an impossibility in the majority of cases then we are faced with a choice - do we find a way to evidence or do we essentially deny that these crimes ever take place?

That's the crux of this isn't it? Though we don't have to deny the crimes occurred - we can simply say they're not proven, which isn't the same thing at all

If there really isn't any objective evidence it seems to me the only alternative would be to convict purely on the accuser's say-so, and it doesn't take much imagination to see where that could lead

Martin Bashir won’t have had to dot or cross anything because he will have just come to the execs with ‘she’s agreed to do an interview’. That’s not to say the content of his programme won’t have been scrutinised by lawyers - I’m too young to remember it, so I don’t know if it was just her interview or if there was voice over / inserts, but if there were, they all would have been checked.

As for social media being the new church - I have never heard that, ever, and I certainly don’t buy it.

What you seem to be doing is conflating traditional media with social media. That’s a very silly thing to do.

One is subject to regulation from the government through legislation, as well as professional standards and ethics from an independent body called Ofcom. The other is a Wild West of cult leaders and their fools that has no accountability to anyone.

I believe that the claims in the documentary and article(s) have been checked to a very high standard and are true, whether or not they reach a courtroom.

And I applaud the victims, journalists and broadcasters that have brought the ‘open secret’ to a wider audience.

It is entirely in the public interest to expose predators and creeps - and I hope that the public scrutiny will force the police to investigate the allegations. Of course, they cannot investigate the alleged rape of the woman in LA, but perhaps any legal action here will spur on their counterparts across the pond.