Since Rolf Harris’ conviction yesterday for indecent assault of children, newspapers are predictably filled with many ‘Rolf Harris’ related stories as the press look for any angle on the story.
One angle on the bigger story you’ll see concerns the fact that law firm Harbottle and Lewis, acting on behalf of Rolf Harris, censored the media by using Leveson to bully them into silence.
But not one such story I’ve seen has mentioned that some outlets like this one were not silenced and did report that Rolf Harris had been questioned under caution.
So this is an ‘outsiders’ inside of view.
Credit must go where it is due. If it had not been for been for this tweet from Mark Williams-Thomas on Nov 29 2012 I for one would not have felt confident in reporting it.
About one hour later, I published, ‘Rolf Harris Interviewed Under Caution Over Sex Offences’
The following day, Nov 30th, I published ‘Further Indications That Rolf Harris was Questioned Yesterday’
In December 2012, I reported that Rolf Harris had spent Christmas at The Priory ‘Op Yewtree: Rolf Harris Spends Christmas At The Priory’
On March 29th I reported ‘Op Yewtree: Rolf Harris Arrested For Sex Offences’
Throughout this entire period the MSM remained silent. It wasn’t until 3 weeks after the arrest of Rolf Harris that we saw the BBC ‘Breaking’ the story.
Just to be clear and for the record, I not once received any request to remove any story connected with this,I was not threatened, nor was I aware of any court injunction and to my knowledge no one has claimed that there was one.
In my view, something is either true and can be reported or untrue and can not.
So why didn’t the Mainstream Media report it when they knew that it was true ?
Well, they won’t thank me for saying this but I believe a lot of it had to do with ‘game playing’ following The Leveson Inquiry.
The MSM united to demonstrate the ‘chilling effect’ of press censorship if Leveson’s recommendations were put into law and they did it by deliberately not reporting on the police investigation into Rolf Harris.
They pretended, and still pretend today, to have been cowed by the empty threats of Harbottle and Lewis. So it was left to the Alternative Media, blogs like The Needle, to keep the public informed and that is why you’ll not see any news reports in the MSM today acknowledging that while they kept silent, the story was being reported nevertheless.
theneedleblog 
Now that the dust is settling on Harris’s conviction (if perhaps not the extent of his offending) and as someone who had personal acquaintance with one of his (as yet still alleged) 1970s victims (and thus for decades have been aware that Mr Harris was never the MrNiceGuy he acted as), it seems to me that Harbottle and Lewis may have shot him in the foot.
Throughout this case, with the knowledge that I’d had for years, I have been staggered by the vehement – even rabid – denial about even the possibility of Harris’s offending from the vast majority of people I whose opinions I heard. The esteem in which Harris was held by the Great British Public could not have been greater.
Given this immense groundswell of affection and trust – albeit misguided, perhaps a more savvy legal and PR team could have used public opinion to his advantage. The mainstream media is extremely powerful in shaping public opinion. Few, if any, juries are impervious to media opinion and commentary before their members are even rostered for jury duty; ditto lawyers. In the absence of suppression, having read what would have been overwhelmingly positive support for Harris, the CPS and the eventual jury would have had at least pause for thought.
With the knowledge now of the facts of this case, Harbottle and Lewis’s heavy-handed use of some of Leveson’s opinions (opinions, not directions, guidance or law) looks rather like a cover-up attempt in the service of a guilty party. It fuelled many a ‘conspiracy theorist’ forum and blog and added to the general air of culpability.
It’s obvious holocaustic tventy-one not only finds these crimes “trivial”, indeed he finds them wholly acceptable — isn’t that right holo?
Curious blog. Not really sure why you hate Rolf Harris so much. From what I can tell a lot of the allegations were ridiculously trivial, things along the lines of ‘he touched my bum’. Well I guess that might be annoying, but serious crime it is not.
As for his relationship with his daughters friend, that’s a rather strange one, especially the fact she kept on with the relationship until she was 29. Much of the legal aspect on those counts seems to have revolved around age of consent dogma and the idea that sexual relationships with someone under *insert ever higher age here* is always a ‘heinous crime’. I mean, you wouldn’t seriously think that Jeremy Forrest had done anything wrong would you? Especially given his ‘victim’ never considered herself a victim!
Now, I’m sure if you have more money like Rolf it can help you delay things and fiddle things, but what should be scary is that *despite* these celebrities being rich they are still being convicted on rather shaky grounds. In America today, for instance, we see nearly a *million* men who bear the label of subhuman sex offender. That situation is now repeating itself across europe and it can affect poor people just as much as wealthy ones.
Don’t get me wrong, if the feminists were honest, supported the rule of law and only wanted to put people in prison for violent acts then maybe I wouldn’t be here arguing. But the fact is they aren’t honest, you see teenage boys being locked away in prison for having consensual relationships with their underage girlfriends and then killing themselves when they are released onto the sex offender register.
Nope, sorry, I see no justice in this witch hunt. It is going to get worse and it will consume more innocent lives in the process.
Feel free to just toss this comment into the bin though…
Oh no, I’ll post this comment up. It demonstrates the kind of idiots out there. People who think that indecently assaulting an 8 year old or having sexual relations with a 12 year old is “Trivial”.
He’s been found guilty. He’s a convicted paedophile. Deal with it!
He’s a “men’s rights activist” – says it all!
I’m curious, what is your reason for believing in the age of consent? Surely you must have an underlying reason for supporting the age of consent other than just making up a rule for the sake of it?
Again I’ll ask, do you think that it was right for Jeremy Forrest to be sentenced to 5.5 years in prison for a consensual relationship? And if so, why?
Damned ‘smart’ phone….. To woo and then bully the liberal left to their agenda. It has left me wondering about all the power plays and machinations that go on behind the scenes, and I have also wondered what, if anything, they have on Rusbridger. Yours and blogs like yours are essential to my ability to hope Gojam. Thank-you.
Yes. It’s a glaring and very worrying omission on behalf of the MSM. I have watched this fairly closely in the last couple of years. The Guardian has been exceptional in avoiding reporting on child abuse stories. I find this appalling from a publication that claims to keep a watch out for when the weakest in our society are trodden on. Don’t forget of course that not long after this blew in late 2012, the Guardian, in addition to it’s woeful record in highlighting this, published the article which was sympathetic to paedophiles in general and Tom O’Carroll in particular. It reminded me of the way the PIE went out of their way to woo and then bulky the
I agree totally. The Tory Party, criminal justice system (police and judiciary) and right-wing MSM are all struggling to impose themselves on the others, while all three groups remain inextricably linked to each other.
and still nothing to find the offenders of yesteryear re the murder of Bernard Oliver and the appalling BBC crew through the Saville years
Well done gojam,You reported the truth while others failed to do so. Makes you wonder what else the MSM are not reporting. Keep up the good work.
Are you going to publish the contents of the suppression order?
What suppression order ?
To my knowledge there wasn’t one and no one has suggested there was.
I think Tommy means the content of the h&l letter. For some reason I thought Guido uploaded it but I can’t find it. In anycase extracts of the letter can be read here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312312/How-Royals-lawyer-used-Leveson-Lord-McAlpine-veiled-threats-Rolf-Harris-arrest-secret.html
On a similar note Greenslade has an interesting take:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/apr/22/rolf-harris-mailonsunday
Thanks
Worth mentioning I think that Guardian did not received any correspondence from H&L but did not publish. Personally I’m minded to think plod had something to do with it.
I’m as sure as I can be that the police had nothing to do with it.
As I said it was a media stitch-up to prove a point about Leveson.
Harris’ arrest was significantly more low-key then Davidson’s, wouldn’t you say? Reporting on Harris’ arrest would be a coup for the Guardian when others failed to and I’m sure they are not trying to prove a point about Leveson. Telegraph, Guido, etc absolutely. As ever just my thoughts.
BBC sez;
“Thank you for your email and please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We can assure you that there was no underlying policy at the BBC that prevented Rolf Harris’s arrest from being reported. Reporting any news comes with an obligation to maintain editorial and legal requirements. We do not discuss the legal reasons why a story is or isn’t run. However, the decision not to name Rolf Harris at the time of the arrest, which was in March 2013, not in November last year, (a position adopted across the media), was taken because of a range of factors; these factors vary from individual to individual.”
Declined to confirm whether or not a legal reason was the reason the story wasn’t run, declined to tell me what the “range of factors” might be, and declined to confirm that they had received correspondence from Harbottle and Lewis.
How many more big names are currently being protected by such censorship?
none this censorship does not really exist.
Really?? Then maybe you’ll be able to explain how this quote from an article on Savile, freely available, has never been used since the truth about him has come out…
“Many businesses and organisations use him as a conduit to the Royal Family; he can pick up the telephone to most of them and has long worked with Prince Charles”….. Then there’s this as well…
”
The folder encloses the letter from the Prime Minister offering him a knighthood, the envelope it came in, some bumf about keeping it secret till the proper date and then – proudest of all – telegrams from Charles and Diana, from Prince Philip, a handwritten letter from Angus Ogilvy and a very sweet homemade card with a stuck-on snapshot of Princess Bea, from the Duchess of York. He is almost bursting with pride as he shows them off.”……
From the same article. So if they are not self censoring things, how come that, the MSM is still quite happy to go along with the cant about “The royals really didn’t know him that well”? The evidence is quite clearly there and mounts up almost by the day about Savile and his “royal connections” being way deeper and ever more creepy in their “closeness”. Now it turns out Liz was quite happy to sit and be painted by another person of morally dubious stature, who also happened to be a good mate of Savile’s
One can only conclude that, both Special Branch and MI5 were inept beyond belief and failed miserably to warn the royals or that, as it increasingly seems to be, happy to ignore people’s sexual proclivities so long as they were “politically onside” or, “useful” to their own machinations. Yet, not a dicky bird from the MSM about all this and the ramifications and fall out that leads from it.
That’s censorship at its’ most pernicious, as we all know the reasons being given for backing off are the old crap about…”The interests of national security” when what that really means, is, merely the continuity of the status quo no matter how rotten to the core it might be.
Or course, they will always find the desperately ill informed or those who quite deliberately choose to be blind to the actualities of what’s going on who will defend the indefensible. People who are so scared of change that they will suspend all critical thinking in order to convince themselves “really everything is fine”. They will litter the comments of such blogs as these attempting to bully, obfuscate and generally drag people away from the nub of what is happening. They are so desperate nowadays they hack these blogs and post replies to comments that haven;t even been passed for posting as yet.
You see, the truth is that, the MSM shot themselves in foot by hacking all those phones. All of a sudden the MSM realised just how dumb they were at times and some of the absolute cobblers they swallowed and printed as the “facts”. They discovered the likes of “Chim” which then meant quite possibly that….. well, I’ll leave that to the reader to work out for themselves……..
Only, the MSM couldn’t print what they now knew as it would almost certainly expose them as hacking people’s private communications. Shed loads of muck and no pastures to spread it upon.
Much of what they discovered is mere tittle tattle about the sexual and personal habits of celebrities however, there was a core that I am told that,”shocked even hardened journos to the core”, that touched on some particularly nasty activities. Funny then that, given the likes of Murdoch could quite possibly have mounted a spirited defence of their activities based on what they found out via those illegal hacks that. They chose to never bring what they know for certain, with txts etc, to prove it and claim..”Given the nature of the activities and the failure of the state, in any form to curtail them, It was wholly in the public’ interest”….
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