THE twisted world of social media’s illegal name-and-shame game went into overdrive before Hugh Edward’s wife named him to stop the savagery.
One reason she took this step was because the piranhas on twitter, Facebook and all those other new bastions of Freedom of Lies were naming anybody they could think of over a crime that may never have been committed!
Professional writers have been condemned again by self-righteous wannabe-journalists on the wicked-pedia of keyboard rebels and misspelt hashtags … we have been demonised for NOT doing what these idiots think they have every right to do.
The Press didn’t name Huw Edwards although every man and his dog, in publishing houses across the world, knew.
We couldn’t do it – unlike social media, which went ahead and broke the same laws we would have broken if we’d gone down the same road.
Moral, ethical and legal reasons… like, for instance, any allegations are yet to be proven.
Yet following the release of Vicky’s statement the backlash against professional journalists has been outrageous.
Witness Jacqui Hames, spokeswoman for Hacked Off. She accused The Sun of using its ‘unaccountable power’ to invade Edwards’ privacy. She said the paper had forgotten that ‘there were real people involved in this story’.
NO THEY HADN’T! THE SUN NEVER NAMED HIM!
And like every other news organisation, the newspaper is accountable to criminal and civil law.
The Street was right to bring Huw’s discomfort to public attention. Reporting on the alleged misbehaviour and potential abuse of power by the powerful is the fundament of journalism.
But the privacy of the powerful is already protected beyond the pale – they continue portraying themselves as pillars of sobriety and morality while hiding their peccadilloes under legislation, secrets and lies.
The argument against the traditional media naming Huw is that it shouldn’t be made public unless something criminal has happened. But the story was about two simple things.
Parents had claimed their vulnerable teenager had a drug habit allegedly being funded by payments from ‘the presenter’. And then of course, the new failure of the BBC to investigate complaints.
The simple truth is that Vicky was forced by social media to name her husband as renegade platform after platform, blog after blog and twittering twerp turned the lives of innocent celebrities into potential hell.
Mud sticks, the traditional media is always been reminded.
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