Crime
Police tipped off BBC about Sir Cliff Richard raid
Monday 18 August South Yorkshire police have admitted that they told a BBC reporter when they would be searching Sir Cliff Richard's home. The force said that the reporter had approached officers some weeks ago about the investtigation and that it was clear he was in a position to publish. The police agreed to notify him in advance of the search in exchange for a delay in publication. "This decision was not taken in order to maximise publicity, it was taken to preserve any potential evidence." The BBC confirmed the sequence of events saying: "We followed normal journalistic practice and agreed not to publish a story that might jeopardise a police inquiry. We have also confirmed that South Yorkshire Police were not the original source for the story." 
A good day to bury bad news
Andy Coulson and Rolf Harris both took in their last breaths of fresh air for a while, and now both are locked up. But which case matters more? The man everyone knew and who committed the greater crimes - or the man at the heart of government that most could not name?
Rape cases never end happily
A victory for men? A defeat for women? A witch-hunt? A time to name and shame? A time to change the law? One man is found not guilty of a series of sex offences and half the population dashes off to denounce the other half. Seven hours of trudging through the quagmire of the papers, the blogosphere, legal websites, feminist websites, misogynist websites, has left the mud on my boots so thick that I can barely move. How did we become so vitriolic, so bloody stupid? 
Stephen Lawrence and police corruption: this matters
The Stephen Lawrence story has been an outrage from the word go but the Express misfired by putting the latest disclosures on page 28. The Express may think that its readers don't care much about dead black teenagers, but don't we all care about police who spy on victims' families, collude with criminals, and lie to outside authorities? Would they not be alarmed that repeated attempts to clean up the Metropolitan Police have still failed? 
Press swept up by excitement
over the 'Greek Maddie' What is it about blonde, blue-eyed girls that makes people go gooey in the brain? After a week in which Greek and Irish police removed children from their homes because they didn't look like their parents, SubScribe questions whether the papers were justified in using material that could identify them. Once again newspapers allowed themselves to suspend common sense and good judgment because the police said it was all right. 
Madeleine: missing an opportunity
In 2007, the year Madeleine McCann vanished, nearly 600 children in Britain were abducted. Some were 'tug of love' cases, some victims of forced marriage. What we can surmise from a respected review three years earlier is about 60 were taken by strangers. I am not joining the chorus of damnation around the McCanns. Nor am I condemning the tunnel vision approach of the Find Madeleine campaign. But the Press doesn't have to follow the one-child agenda. |
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