Brooks Newmark "Entrapment"

[FloraFox]

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion "she" asked him to send her the photo, is there?

So simply being an attractive young woman and complimenting national politicians on twitter is "entrapping" men into sending photos of their genitals?

I won't post again on this thread.

Promises promises.

empire you said the only person who did any exploiting was the journalist, though and that Newmark had to step down because he was stupid. Do you not think there is more to it than that, even if there was fishing by the journalist?

When you say there's a really big difference, what is the difference as it relates to Newmark's behaviour and his perceptions?

Cross-post - why would you think differently? I'm genuinely curious about why you think it makes a difference.

Empire Do you think it makes a difference that he clearly initiated the private part of the discussion off twitter? What about him asking "her" to keep the photograph secret? I view that as an exercise of power on his part. Keeping secrets is the language of grooming and it raises a lot of red flags about how he might have behaved if she was real and they met up (as he was proposing). Also, the language where he asked her to send the picture without hands in the way and with legs open "as per my instructions". What do you think about those things?

I also think he was exploiting his position, even if she did all the chasing. I think we can agree to differ on that as you clearly don't.

I'm still interested in your views about how the fishing (if there was any) makes any difference.

Sorry cross-post.

OK I don't agree that the fact others were sent messages means the journalist was lying. I think the cover story is plausible.

"The fact that the journo seems to have lied about methods used casts doubt on all of it though."

I don't agree with that either because I don't see there's much here that relies on the journalist's credibility. If it did, I could see your point. In this situation, all the evidence is a serious of tweets, text messages and photographs. I would expect these would have been reviewed by the Mirror and their legal team before publication. If Newmark was claiming there were other tweets or messages that the journalist had not shown to the Mirror and those would have changed the story and the journalist denied it, then yes, his credibility would be in issue and it would make a difference whether he lied about the background to the sting. However, there hasn't been any allegation from Newmark that the journalist misrepresented the exchange of messages. In fact, he fell on his sword amazingly quickly and said it was all his fault.

Do you think the fact that the story was turned down by two other papers says anything though? If the methods used were legit, the Sun would normally jump at this sort of thing.

Hard to say. There's a lot goes into deciding which stories to run. Legal risk is one thing but so is the editorial agenda at the time and the price asked, as well as other factors. I don't think we can assume that because the Sun passed on the story it must be dodgy. The Sun is not the most risk-taking newspaper when it comes to stories (contrary to belief in some quarters).

As far as I can see, Newmark has not made a complaint to IPSO, it was another Tory MPs who made the complaint.

IPSO may make a finding of fishing and a breach of the Editors' Code of Practice. It still doesn't change what Newmark did though. As an aside, I think it is highly inappropriate that the chairman of IPSO made comments about this case during a fringe meeting at the Tory party conference:

www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/30/brooks-newmark-sex-sting-ipso-sunday-mirror

I am really glad this discussion is ongoing though it is a shame CagedBird decided to post personal attacks.

I dunno Flora, if I sent someone a personal picture, I'd ask them to keep it secret, especially if I was married. I don't think that's grooming.

Empire, if it wasn't a journo but a bored teenager with Photoshop, who'd still tweeted all those MPs etc, how would you feel then? (Ie amateur not professional entrapment)

I don't think this is a situation of grooming but yonic why would he think she would keep it secret?

Oh, I don't think I was clear, by saying amateur I was trying to remove any reference to "targetting" BN.

Flora - to be clear, when I said (in self-mockery) that I probably had a cultural bias against the use of entrapment, I was referring to my ethnic background - but I didn't want to derail the thread even further.

I do believe that scattering flirty tweets to a number of men represented a fishing expedition.

This would mean that the journo was not working from prior intelligence that BN was a sleaze, which is what they've claimed.

My thoughts are that Wickham had a rumour that one of the minor ministers was sleazy, but didn't know exactly which one. So he had to narrow it down.

I note he's now stepping down
as an MP as well after he sexted a picture of his genital to another woman

I'm sure he was trapped into doing that too Yonic, or something.

m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29586898