The Sun newspaper in England has finally named Rolf Harris as the suspect arrested last month in England suspected of “sex abuse” after it been going viral online for the over three weeks. The Sun claimed it was a “World Exclusive” which is a straight out lie and embarrassment to themselves and all mainstream media.
The issue needs a close look at why the media waited in naming him. Although as I have previously said that the MSM did name Rolf Harris “charade style” in that they gave everyone all the clues to work out who it was, just not his name.
The most likely two reasons that Rolf Harris has been named now:
1. Rolf Harris is due to be questioned by the police for a third time in May and the The Sun did not want to be beaten by other media in naming him.
2. The online media such as websites, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter, that have named Rolf Harris have put extreme pressure on the mainstream media to name him. Everyday that has passed that the mainstream media have not named him the MSM’s credibility was being eroded.
The Sun story (Click here to read) has now been picked up by all Australian mainstream media such as the smh.com.au which has run the story titled “British newspaper reports Rolf Harris arrested in sex abuse inquiry” (Click here to read)
The Online Media (or New Media) drive the issue
Rolf Harris’s arrest has been reported online since last November when he was first arrested, although only to a minor degree.
Since his second arrest at the end of March it has gone viral online and I have written two posts on the subject. The first post I wrote on the 30 March 2013 titled “Rolf Harris arrested in UK sex scandal police investigation” has had over 242,000 page views to date and been liked on Facebook over 7000 times for an estimated reach of well over half a million people. (Click here to read the post) These are huge numbers even for a mainstream media site and this is only one online site that has written about the matter. So The Sun claim of a “World Exclusive” is a disgrace and deceives the reader and the public. Those sorts of numbers also put a great deal of pressure on the MSM to name Rolf Harris.
I wrote a second post on the 6th April titled “Rolf Harris. The British police want your help! The evidence. Guilty or not guilty?” (Click here to read)
On the 8th of April the ABC TV show Media Watch did a story on the Australian media’s failure to name Rolf Harris titled “Protecting the famous”. (Click here to watch or read the transcript) I have little doubt Media Watch was influenced to some degree by social media to do the story. Interestingly Media Watch also failed to name Rolf Harris in their own story criticising the Australian media for not naming him.
The MSM need to give detailed answers on why and who told them not to name Rolf Harris earlier when they have named others in the same matter and other matters.
Rolf Harris has no one to blame but himself for the bad media coverage. He has had plenty of opportunity to call a press conference himself and address the issue. If he had the headlines would probably be a lot more favourable to him and his supporters would have something to fight back with. As detailed in my last post on Rolf Harris, he is in clear breach of crisis management 101. His failure to give his side of the story has left himself with the look of a guilty person and wide open for attack which a lot of people on the social media have done, some in a brutal manner.
This site has a main focus on judicial corruption but I follow stories like this because the mainstream media also fail to report on the corruption in the judiciary which other posts on this site will show you.
For regular readers and all readers for that matter it is worth noting that a small but growing site like this can step up to the plate and help drive an issue when the mainstream media fails to. The figures above, which I will repeat, of 242,000 page views to date and over 7000 likes on Facebook and an estimated reach of well over half a million people for my first post on Rolf Harris show that. As this site and others grow so will their power to see justice set right on many issues.
Update: 1/7/14: Rolf Harris found guilty on all 12 counts of indecent assault (Click here to read more)
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