Poor old Newsnight. They DON'T say someone is a paedophile and they get into trouble. They DO say someone is a paedophile and they get into trouble. They can't win. What do people want of them?
It almost makes me think that the courts should decide about this stuff rather than TV, newspapers and people guessing.
Though I am fairly sure that Chris Morris might have taken over Newsnight and be using it to once again satirise this country's reaction and over-reaction to this difficult subject. The hysteria and rumour and madness around all this is doing no one any favours. It's becoming reminiscent of alien abduction stories or the prophecies of David Icke and all that means is that the perpetrators of these crimes can obfuscate and hide away behind the cracks again. This is just a slightly more middle-class version of those mobs that attacked the offices of paediatricians. It's wrong that for so many years victims voices have gone unheard, but the answer is not to now do the opposite and broadcast and publish every accusation. Certainly not without just double-checking that the accused person's face is the same as the perpetrator.
It might be a controversial opinion, but I am not even sure that a TV programme is the right forum for investigating such claims. Just as I don't think the family of a murder victim should be in charge of finding the murderer. It's an emotive subject but to be fair to everyone you have to treat it dispassionately and rigourously and not just burst through a door and accuse the first person you see who looks a bit guilty or who you'd heard some weird rumours about. But what do I know?
I hate to see the BBC tying itself into knots and playing into the hands of the people who want it weakened or destroyed. They're doing such a fuck awful job of everything at the moment that I wouldn't be surprised to discover there was some kind of mole or saboteur in their ranks who was making all this happen. And I think we should all assume I am right and then speculate wildly about who the double agent is and then when enough of us agree we should find out where he or she lives and firebomb their house.
Let's back the fuck off people, find the people who did these things and punish them for it when they've been convicted. Put your pitchforks back in the tool shed (or even sell them on ebay, let's face it you never use them anymore). Put out those flaming torches. You've all gone crazy.
