Well known Australian arrested in Britain over sex offences, Rolf Harris still won't be named by MSM
Well known Australian arrested in Britain over sex offences, Rolf Harris still won't be named by MSM; British politics and media blogger Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes has named the suspect (SMH)
A well-known Australian arrested in Britain over alleged sex offences has not been named. Is this commendable restraint or the media shamefully gagging itself?
Last Friday a troop of London media footsoldiers camped outside the home of an Australian entertainer in Berkshire.
It was a chilly day, but – unusually for the Brits – most complaints weren't about the weather.
They were about the fact that they would not, unless someone broke ranks, be able to publish or broadcast two words: the instantly-recognisable name of the man they were pursuing.
Partly they were being kind. Partly they had legal fears. And partly it was due to the self-conscious paranoia that has enveloped British media for the past year.
Last week an 82 year-old man from Berkshire was arrested by British police on suspicion of sexual offences.
He was not charged, and bailed to a date in May pending further enquiries. He is being investigated as part of Operation Yewtree, launched after claims emerged that 1970s TV host Jimmy Savile had abused teenage girls.
The accusations against this man were not linked to Savile.
And that's all the news fit to print according to official, on-the-record sources, and it's pretty much all you can find in the mainstream, professional media.
However, those who follow Twitter or a number of blogs have a name to put to the reports: the name of a high-profile Australian entertainer.
"What a disgrace mainstream media won't name [the man]," one tweet read.
"The MSM propaganda machine is working overtime in a bid to sway public opinion," another blogged.
Australian PR director Geoffrey Stackhouse chose to name the entertainer and then use it as a "teaching moment" to spruik for business on his company blog.
"Our legal system is based on the presumption of innocence, but sadly the court of public opinion is not," he wrote, without apparent irony.
"The internet is ablaze with speculation about the arrest and an online rumour uncorrected for 24 hours becomes fact. So what would you do if it was your reputation or your brand in the spotlight?" It was not clear what Mr Stackhouse's sources were for naming the entertainer.
Perhaps it was Twitter, which overflowed with the man's name over the weekend, some users being slightly cautious about it (that is, phrasing it as a question), most not, and many jumping straight to "X is a paedo" with no visible pause to consider the allegation's basis in fact, legality or compassion.
Or Stackhouse may have played an easy game of join-the-dots. The man has been described in Australian media as an Australian entertainer, popular in Britain, who lives in Berkshire and was aged 82 last month.
This narrows the field a tad. No wonder reporters at the stakeout expressed fervent hope the antipodes would be the first to break the naming taboo.
For its part, Fairfax Media - publisher of this website - has been unable to confirm from official sources the identity of the arrested man, notwithstanding the blizzard of social media accusation.
The British politics and media blogger Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, has jumped the hurdle that the press did not, naming the suspect on the principle of free speech.
He wrote: "A secret police is a dangerous thing, reporting the arrest of suspects is an important safeguard in a free society.
"No judge has ordered reporting restrictions in relation to [the man], no super-injunctions prevent the reporting of news concerning him."
Staines told Fairfax many British media have plenty of evidence to confidently name the suspect – including seeing police at his house when it was raided last year – but arrests following the phone-hacking scandal have led to a "compliance structure" in the press.
There is no legal reason why Rolf Harris has not been named by the main media either in the UK or OZ. The news.com.au site in their stuff have said as much and say they have "chosen" not to name him.
The absurdity is that the media are happy to identify him (they give enough info for that) but not to name him. That's farcical. The media are obviously under some non-legal outside pressure from the authorities making threats which have scared the media shitless. Saville wasn't named until he was long dead. All the other arrested celebrities have been named. Why not Rolf Harris? Both Saville and Rolf Harris were close associates of the Royal family. In the absence of any other explanation I'm assuming that the pressure on the media to censor the name of the now 83 year old comes from the ruling mafia. They can't allow Rolf to speak openly (he could reveal a lot of awkward stuff), hence he's being given protection in safe unknown accommodation.
As the article points out, "A secret police is a dangerous thing, reporting the arrest of suspects is an important safeguard in a free society.". Secret arrests are the sort of stuff totalitarian regimes engage in.
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