The Mail v Harman, Dromey and Hewitt Day 6:
Harman makes a hash of it and the bully wins
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Tuesday 25 February, 2014
So the Mail has won. Harriet Harman blinked first and allowed herself to be dragged into the kangaroo court of public opinion, Newsnight generously offering its studio since the Old Bailey is otherwise occupied.
Nobody, not even the Mail, has seriously suggested that Harman, her husband or Patricia Hewitt were in favour of legalising sex with children in their idealistic youth at the National Council for Civil Liberties. But the Mail got very cross when they didn't respond to a story last December about the NCCL's links with the Paedophile Information Exchange. If the Mail asks questions, it expects answers, it is not a newspaper that takes kindly to being ignored.
Jack Dromey did make a brief statement to the Birmingham Mail, but beyond that: silence. A silence that has been maintained even today by Hewitt, the most senior of the three in the NCCL hierarchy. Why should they speak? The links had been made before - on the internet, in the Telegraph in 2012, even by Melanie Phillips in the Mail. They seem to have taken the view that this was something that would be brought up from time to time. Nobody would take it too seriously and they would maintain a dignified distance and wait for it to go away.
This time they got it wrong.
So the Mail has won. Harriet Harman blinked first and allowed herself to be dragged into the kangaroo court of public opinion, Newsnight generously offering its studio since the Old Bailey is otherwise occupied.
Nobody, not even the Mail, has seriously suggested that Harman, her husband or Patricia Hewitt were in favour of legalising sex with children in their idealistic youth at the National Council for Civil Liberties. But the Mail got very cross when they didn't respond to a story last December about the NCCL's links with the Paedophile Information Exchange. If the Mail asks questions, it expects answers, it is not a newspaper that takes kindly to being ignored.
Jack Dromey did make a brief statement to the Birmingham Mail, but beyond that: silence. A silence that has been maintained even today by Hewitt, the most senior of the three in the NCCL hierarchy. Why should they speak? The links had been made before - on the internet, in the Telegraph in 2012, even by Melanie Phillips in the Mail. They seem to have taken the view that this was something that would be brought up from time to time. Nobody would take it too seriously and they would maintain a dignified distance and wait for it to go away.
This time they got it wrong.
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With a general election only a year away, Cameron floundering in the floodwater and the smoke from the Ralph Miliband backblast yet to clear, the Mail was in search of a new route to the moral high ground. The disclosure that the Operation Fernbridge investigation was to look into the Paedophile Information Exchange gave it the gap in the hedge it was seeking.
Both the Mail and the Labour trio miscalculated. The Mail expected other newspapers, the web and broadcasters to pick up the shears to help them through the greenery. But they didn't. Harman and co thought that if they ignored the Mail it would retreat. But it didn't. It picked up its flail, waved it furiously - and still got nowhere. Until the breakthrough came with help from an unlikely source - a handful of commentators whose views do not generally command the Mail's respect popped up to say the politicos should explain themselves. Rod Liddle piled in to say the BBC should have been covering the 'story'. Why? No one else had put it on the news pages or in their news bulletins. Why was the BBC culpable? Yesterday's Mail splash was the weakest of the lot - shrill repetition of the questions that MUST be answered and a few quotes from newspaper columnists and a couple of lame MPs. The armoury was looking depleted, was there anything in reserve? With the enemy weakened, Harman capitulated. She appeared on Newsnight - and made a complete hash of vindicating herself. Most people were willing her to say "We were young, idealistic and naive. We wanted free speech for everyone. We made misjudgments. Everyone does. Of course I wish we'd kicked PIE out earlier." But no, instead she went on about the Mail's photographs of girls in bikinis. Had she never heard that the mudslinging 'two wrongs' approach doesn't work. That contrition, combined with the 'lessons learnt, moved on' line is best. Oh, I'd forgotten. She's a politician. They're not wired that way. And so instead of putting the whole nonsense to bed, Harman cleared the path for the Mail - and the rest of Fleet Street - to go charging through. Today she is in every newspaper, on every news bulletin, the subject of every current affairs debate.
The Daily Dacre was still screaming at her this morning to say 'sorry', so out she trotted to express regret, while insisting that she would not apologise to the Mail. And, having failed to learn anything from last night, still she twittered and tweeted about bikini-clad 11-year-olds. Yes, the sidebar of shame is exactly that. But it's not the same as grown men abusing little girls and boys for real. A week ago, Harman had a reputation for defending women and children. Now her name will forever be linked to paedophilia. No one thinks she did anything wrong in the 1970s, but here in 2014 she's shown herself to be politically inept. Ed Miliband is backing her 100% as his deputy and her doppleganger Tessa Jowell is out beating the drum for her. But it's too late. Does it matter? Or is it, as an old journo friend says, 'all showbiz'? Yes it does matter. Not because of its affect on the career of one politician or because it will make a jot of difference to any police investigation or to the treatment of any child. It matters because the bully has triumphed. And so will carry on bullying. And the victims are not only politicians and celebrities. The Mail does not discriminate. It is as happy pouring its bile and innuendo over a duchess as a driver, as we can see here. The Duchess
The Mail took a break from its limited stock of photographs of Harman and co as twentysomethings yesterday and instead had a nostalgic poke at the Duchess of York and her 'startling new look'.
A further photograph appeared on page three, coupled with a headline asking "Has Fergie taken the dieting too far?" "Wearing her hair scraped back off her face, the Duchess of York looked tired and drawn as she left a restaurant in Manhattan..." The photograph showed no mercy. After the "Wow! Look at Julie Christie at 60" nonsense last week, here was a woman of 54 looking like a woman of 54. She had, the copy explained, been on a "gruelling three-month boot camp in the Swiss Alps" and had lost about 30lb. This was all the excuse the paper needed to produce a follow-up spread today, regurgitating thirty years of highs and lows in the Duchess's life through her face and figure. 
The Duchess shows no signs of retiring from public life and it could be said that there is still a public interest in her activities since her daughters are both high in succession to the Throne. So maybe there is a defence to this - the positive pictures do outnumber the unhappy ones. But how helpful this is in Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I'm not sure.
What I am sure of is that there is no possible justification for this: The driverLast November the Sun splashed on the lottery winners Adrian and Gillian Bayford separating. The next day the Mail pitched in with its version of the story: a front-page photograph of Mrs Bayford with her winners' day glass of fizz and a headline that read
Love-split £148m lotto wife and rumours of affair with gardener She wasn't even a person in her own right - just the 'lotto wife'. The story inside delivered exactly what was promised on the front: a catalogue of rumour and sneers about a woman who had dared to indulge herself with clothes and cars and a grand house - as most would in the event of such a windfall landing in their laps. Her husband, portrayed as more grounded, was said to be less at ease with the new wealth and he had moved out of the very, very big house to one that was just very big. It was a cruel piece of 'journalism' and SubScribe said so at the time.
Marta Jerosz is said to be working as the newly-single 43-year-old's bodyguard and driver...
"And it seems the pair have hit it off - so much so that rumours of a romance between them have reached a newspaper in her native Poland." Ah, we're back on the rumour mill again. And just in case we didn't catch it first time, she's Polish from Poland. Mr Bayford says there's no romance, that Ms Jerosz 'works for him and that's it'. But the Mail knows how to detect the tell-tale signs: "The pair looked at ease in each other's company as they arrived at Stansted Airport on Friday. Joking in the sunshine, with one small suitcase between them, they could have been mistaken for a couple embarking on a weekend away." Or maybe the single suitcase might mean that only one of them was catching a flight? "Miss Jarosz did not seem to be performing any sort of security role, carrying a £200 Fossil designer handbag on her arm and wearing knee-high heeled boots." Well that seals it then. Where were the helmet and flak jacket? Mr Bayford, who had no need to explain himself, said that he had been going to see his children "who are thought to have moved to Dundee after their mother found love with car deal Alan Warnock" - what happened to the gardener? Was that just a rumour after all? Since the Bayfords split, Miss Jarosz has apparently been "a regular visitor to his new house and has been seen driving a £34,000 Volvo, thought to be a gift from the father-of-two, who cannot drive". Well naturally the only explanation is that it's a devoted lover's generous present. It couldn't be an employer supplying his driver with the tools required to do her job. And if she works for him as a bodyguard and driver, it's fair to assume that she would need to be where he was a good deal of the time. Mr Bayford, Ms Jarosz and her mother all say there is no romance. And what if there were? What business is it of the Mail or of any of us? Who can justify this invasive 'journalism', speculating on the relationships of people who play no part in public life? We hardly need reminding that the Press is on notice over its intrusive behaviour. Two former editors are in the dock at the Old Bailey at this very moment. Parliament is imposing a new regulatory regime that no one in the industry wants.
And the man in charge of journalists' code of ethics is bullying MPs and prying into the private lives of ordinary people whose actions are not remotely in the public interest. That is why the NCCL furore is so much more than showbiz. |
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Recycled newsNo matter how old a story is, it is still news if it has never been told before.
Retelling an old story, however new it is to the author, is not news. Repeatedly retelling an old story at 'decent' intervals is not only not news, it is in danger of being propaganda. Harman, Hewitt and the paedophiles 
By what measure is this serving the reader? To devote the front page and another inside to a Violet Elizabeth Bott tantrum 'Why won't you talk to us? Why won't you come to our kangaroo court? Look, even your silly friends say you should!'
This isn't news. It isn't reporting. It's a game of who blinks first. The Mail v Harman (continued) What others had to sayWhen is a scandal not a scandal?
In the Harman affair, no one can see a connection between the past and the present; nothing prominent Labour figures did or said about child abuse at the old National Council for Civil Liberties influenced what Labour did or said in power, or what Labour thinks today. Nick Cohen, Spectator Smear or legitimate story? Does anyone seriously believe Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt have any paedophile sympathies? No, of course not. They worked for a ramshackle organisation which was run in an anarchic way...
The biggest mistake Harriet Harman has made was to give that interview to Newsnight. All it succeeded in doing was fanning the story’s flames and giving other media organisations and newspapers to excuse they needed to cover it. Iain Dale blog, LBC Harman should have tackled smears sooner
Hindsight is always 20/20. Has the Mail apologised for getting the MMR vaccine scare wrong? Not that I have noticed. It got battered baby syndrome noisily wrong for a long time too (then nimbly switched sides), failed to nail Jimmy Savile – all the Fleet Street tough guys were afraid of his lawyers – and is currently frightening readers over plans to harvest GP patient records for research. As usual it's a bit right (confidentiality is an issue), but mostly wrong. It has "at least four GPs" on its side. Michael White, The Guardian 
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Sun boobs with cancer campaign Ukraine and the threat to the West Harman, Hewitt and the paedophiles Harman caves in and the bully wins Hewitt apologises and the Sun pitches in |
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