Friend comment on Russell Brand situation...Not sure how to respond

[Startingagainandagain]

I was messaging a female friend this morning

I was a victim of an assault by a male so called friend last year, which she is aware of.

I mentioned in my message that some of what the victims are saying about Brand resonated so much with me.

In her response she said something in the line of ''well he took on the establishment and now they are trying to hang him''...

This really surprised me as I did not have her down for someone who would fall for that type of nonsense and I am not quite sure how to respond to her.

My view is that the man is a creep and I believe the victims 100% and I am going to struggle with staying friend with someone who would put any weight on conspiracy theories. As someone who has encountered this type of predators, I feel strongly about it all.

Do you think I am unreasonable to think this might be reason enough to distance myself?

This is someone who I have known for a year only, rather than a close, long term friend.

AIBU to cool the friendship over this and let it drift?

That wouldn’t match the timeline. Police interviewed him in 2007 for an assault in the 1970s. That was dismissed by high court in 2009. But many other victims were coming forward and he was being investigated at the time of his death in 2011.

Anyone who believes that Rupert Murdoch sat down with a publicly-owned broadcaster to in some way collude to bring down a crank you gets a couple of million views per week on his YouTube channel (probably many of them American) has absolutely lost their minds.

Brand has no power, and outside of his cult I can’t even remember that last time I heard his name. If you think he’s ‘taken on the establishment’ then tell me one thing he’s done to effect real change in society at any point in his life.

Channel 4’s Dispatches, meanwhile, played a huge part in bringing down the BNP and is one of the world’s most respected news programmes.

The Sunday Times has campaigned for the victims of the cladding scandal, has uncovered the murder of a Kenyan woman by a British soldier and broke the story of the BBC chairman’s involvement in an £800k loan to the prime minister.

Why on God’s green earth would these titles and their world-renowned journalists be threatened by a Poundshop David Icke?

They’ve gone for Brand because he was once a high profile man in a position of power over women who worked with, who abused that power by raping those women.

And as for using this story as some kind of dead cat. That’s not how journalism works. There are thousands of reporters in this country. Six of them worked on this story. Do you think all the other journalists stopped work while they were doing that?

I report on your common-or-garden rapists every day in my job. Does my work get an audience of millions? No. Would I love it too? Yes. But people naturally want to read about famous rapists. I can’t do anything another that. But I accept that writing about famous rapists fuels massive public conversations that need to be had. Things need to change and this story is a big moment that might be a catalyst for that change.

He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law

Perhaps better to wait until there is a court case and the facts can be fully reviewed.
Many newspaper/media articles are devoid of fact so these should be treated as allegations until proven otherwise.
Everyone deserves to defend themselves in a court of law and then they will be judged on the outcome. Either guilty and rightfully sentenced or innocent and allowed to seek vindication.
I'm not fond of the guy but I don't agree with trial by media either. Have we forgotten what happened to Caroline Flack.

I just don't know when it became not only acceptable but actually celebrated for the justice process to be entirely disregarded and for accused people to lose their reputations and earning power before they've even stood trial.

He’s not on trial. A story about him has appeared in a newspaper. Don’t you think the newspapers should write about anything that hasn’t already been tried in court?

Hillsborough? Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties? Charlotte Owen? Grenfell? Jimmy Savile? Yeah we should just shut up about all that stuff because there’s not been a court case.

Nobody is 'innocent until proven guilty in a court of law', what a silly statement.

If someone commits a crime they are guilty from the moment they commit the crime.

Similarly if an innocent person is wrongly found guilty in a court of law, they don't magically become guilty in reality.

What a court of law does or doesn't find is not the same as reality. It's the best we've got at the moment but our legal system is woefully inadequate at convicting rapists. This is precisely why fewer than one rapist in 100 gets convicted.

It's an interesting one, because yes, the broadcasters don't care.
But, this was run and funded by Channel 4. Channel 4 were the ones enabling his behaviour and commissioning programs of his for years. So they are holding themselves to account. Which is really interesting, and implies that someone cares enough to make this program on the channel which enabled him.

Defamation laws in this country are some of the strictest in the world. Anything you publish must be provable in a defamation court. I have to read every word I publish and ask myself if I’m confident I can prove it. These journalists had to do that to such a high degree that I’m surprised they ever got this story over the line.

I can see why you are uncomfortable but if you are friends with someone they don’t have to 100% align with your way of thinking, they really don’t.

Healthy debate has all but disappeared (actually, Mumsnet is a case in point!).

If this is the only reason you’re throwing away a previously strong friendship then you need to weight up whether it really is a deal breaker. Which of course, it may genuinely be.

Or whether you can agree to disagree, which is what people used to do but seem broadly incapable of any more.

There's no such thing as 'trial by media.' This is a journalistic investigation. It's literally what journalists are meant to do - investigate and report on stories in the public interest.

Funny how so many of the 'free speech' warriors are against a free press - literally the cornerstone of free speech and a column of democracy - at least when it reports on things they'd rather it shut up about.

I imagine channel 4 are protecting themselves by being the ones to out it.

Quite.

The idea that “The Establishment” would act in concert to try to silence a has been who, having exhausted mainstream media has now jumped on the conspiracy alt.right bandwagon is laughable. He just isn’t that insightful or important, even if you believe in establishment plots (which I don’t).

To answer your original question: as a general rule I think having your views challenged by friends is healthy. People who on your sensitivities, make apologies for sexual assault and misogyny and buy into conspiracy woo are not people I would be happy to indulge though.

…except if you’re Cliff Richard.

Or Jason Donovan.

Perhaps around the time that people started to care that the criminal justice system is so flawed when it comes to prosecuting rape that it might as well be considered legal?

Ah the Caroline flack defense , why don't you just say Be Kind and have done.

It still wasn't a trial by media.

He won his libel case against them. And it hasn't exactly damaged his multi-million pound career. Unless I'm wrong and there's still not a whole street named after him in Portugal and he's actually living in a council flat now.

Just last year Channel 4 faced an OFCOM probe over ’emergency news’ stunt to promote their cyber attack drama “The Undeclared War” where they did a fake emergency news broadcast announcing the UK was under a cyber attack.

That sort of environment of broadcast anything as news to make a profit doesn’t give me the assurance that a high court ruling on RB would.

The conspiracy theorists who are stating they are shutting down a threat to establishment are a bit nuts.

He's a has been who could have had it all but pissed it all away.

The establishment don't really care about him he's not a threat with his nuts rants.

I am more than happy to have friends with differing views, but the difference between them and OPs friend is that they care about me and so would never make a comment like that knowing what I've been through.

Whether RB is guilty or innocent is irrelevant, she was very insensitive and cared more about her own opinion than OP's feelings.

Who broke the “story” then? your mum?

No one could have predicted at the time if his career would have been damaged by it. I’m pleased it hasn’t but it easily could have destroyed him.

What happened to innocent until proved guilty? Im not on either side until he's been proven in a court to be innocent or guilty, not because channel 4 told me to call him a rapist.
The thing is, he has come against the establishment for his entire adult life, so why would they take him down now? I don't know.
I also know women can and have lied about these things, I've known two personally to have their whole lives ripped apart by lies (absolutely proven to be) like this. So, again, until proven either way, I'll sit on the fence.

I wouldn’t fall out with a friend over celebrity gossip. I don’t know enough about the story to know if I 100% believe every woman involved but I do believe they deserve to be listened too and taken seriously. If it was happening in my actual life with people I knew I may feel differently

It’s not a high degree though. It’s a low bar compared to a court trial. Besides the media can get off scot free even if what they publish is not true if they thought it was in the public interest to publish the information, it was the honest opinion of their sources and there is no evidence of any malice towards RB.

The free speech warriors who don't understand public interest journalism or a Reynolds Defence which I've banged on about a lot today - whereby you have to PROVE that you aren't working in your own interests as a media company for clicks, advertising or revenue but are publishing a story for the common good of society.

Those conspiracy theorists who somehow think that a Reynolds Defence is a move by the establishment when the very premise of a Reynolds Defence is weighted against... oh yeah, the establishment.

Yep okay dok.