4 ms·

The most interesting thing about this to me is that shortly after the advisor was arrested, the rightwing Daily Mail started a smear campaign against senior mem

The most interesting thing about this to me is that shortly after the advisor was arrested, the rightwing Daily Mail started a smear campaign against senior members of the opposition, effectively accusing them of having supported paedophilia in the 1970s[1]. It dominated UK headlines for about a week, until the Ukraine crisis, at which point the (much more serious and concrete) allegations against the government advisor are revealed. Nice work. [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dailymail-harrietharman http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dail...

BgSpnnrs 13y ago
The DM broke this story too. Defo an interesting timeline of events.
- chrisdevereux 13y ago
  That's interesting. Check out how far down the front page it is, though! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
  - doreo 13y ago
    It is hugely prominent on todays dead tree front page though http://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/daily-mail/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=34955 http://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/daily-mail/front-pages-today.c...
    - chrisdevereux 13y ago
      Ah, fair enough.
gadders 13y ago
And as that Guardian article concludes: "But I'm with the Mail on this. On the basis of the paper's evidence, I think Harman, Dromey and Hewitt do need to address this matter seriously. It isn't good enough to say the world was different then (as some have been suggesting in relation to the recent crop of historic sex abuse court cases) because there has never been a time when it has been all right to advocate sex with a child."
- chrisdevereux 13y ago
  Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point. There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know, the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned with. You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.

BgSpnnrs 13y ago

The DM broke this story too. Defo an interesting timeline of events.

chrisdevereux 13y ago
That's interesting. Check out how far down the front page it is, though! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
- doreo 13y ago
  It is hugely prominent on todays dead tree front page though http://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/daily-mail/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=34955 http://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/daily-mail/front-pages-today.c...
  - chrisdevereux 13y ago
    Ah, fair enough.

gadders 13y ago

And as that Guardian article concludes: "But I'm with the Mail on this. On the basis of the paper's evidence, I think Harman, Dromey and Hewitt do need to address this matter seriously. It isn't good enough to say the world was different then (as some have been suggesting in relation to the recent crop of historic sex abuse court cases) because there has never been a time when it has been all right to advocate sex with a child."

chrisdevereux 13y ago
Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point. There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know, the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned with. You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.