What else are we turning a blind eye to?
One of the amazing things about living in the modern era is how easy it usually is to watch, either on a TV on demand service such as BT Vision, or by getting hold of a DVD boxed set, of classic Television of film programmes, sometimes from decades back.
And sometimes this gives you an extraordinary sense of how attitudes have changed.
This evening I nearly fell off my chair at one piece of evidence of how society's attitude to certain actions, and one offence in particular, has massively changed in 18 years.
My wife and I were watching the pilot episode of "Jonathan Creek" which was called "The Wrestler's Tomb" and first aired in 1997.
Back then driving while operating a handheld mobile phone was not a specific offence (though if the police caught you failing to control a car properly while doing so, they could and would prosecute you for driving without due care and attention) and the BBC could make a programme which gets laughs out of ridiculing this as silly behaviour - rather than a crime - which I don't think would be socially acceptable in a programme filmed now. (This happens in the second episode.)
But the shift in attitudes which gave me as "scales falling from the eyes" moment was on phone hacking.
One of the main characters in the first few series of the show is a freelance investigative journalist investigating miscarriages of justice. In the first episode of the programme she hacks into the answering machine of one of the people involved in the murder they are trying to solve. Nobody bats an eyelid.
And I wouldn't have batted an eyelid in 1997. In 2015 I was reaching for the pause button and saying to my wife
"What? Do you realise what she just did?"
Of course, seeing a once-mighty newspaper shut down and others embarrassed, and several of those who had been among the most powerful people in the country put on trial last year, for an offence which barely registered as a crime in the public mind in 1997 does rather change one's attitudes.
Of course we now know that phone hacking was endemic in the late 20th century and the first decade of this one, but until very recently major news organisations could and did try to use the "one rogue journalist" defence when someone was caught.
In this particular case it is possible to pinpoint exactly when the mood shifted. It was when the News of the World was accused of hacking the phone of murdered teenager Millie Dowler.
The fact that the Jonathan Creek episode could be broadcast as it was makes me think - up to about the Millie Dowler incident, lots of people knew what was going on but only the victims were really bothered, and nobody else saw them as victims. In the episode the phone hack helps catch a murderer.
The people who were hacked were assumed to be celebrities, e.g. rich and famous people, or those who the hacks involved thought might be up to no good.
And then, surprisingly suddenly, the pendulum swung, and phone hacking was seen as a symptom of a press which thought itself above the law.
Indeed, in my opinion the pendulum swung too far - there wasn't actually much wrong with the law, it just needed to be properly enforced and now it is being. Too much statutory regulation of the press will not just protect the innocent, which needs to be done, but hamper the right of the press to do their legitimate job as a public watchdog.
We need to ask if there is anything else we have been, as a society, turning a blind eye to. And if we find that there are, we need to make sure the law goes after the guilty without setting up a witch-hunt against the innocent.
At the time of writing this in January 2015, there are a lot of allegations that there is indeed something which has been ignored for too long in many corners of society - the sexual abuse of children. Equally, there is no area where more care needs to be taken to ensure that we help the authorities to go after the guilty without deploying mob rule against the innocent.
There is now strong evidence that in Rotherham and elsewhere, thousands of children have had their lives wrecked by abuse. The authorities in every area should be asking themselves, could this be happening here?
Unfortunately it is also an indisputable fact that significant numbers of totally innocent people have had their lives wrecked, been driven from their homes, lost their own children, or in at least two confirmed cases actually been murdered, because of mistaken allegations of child abuse.
We all need to keep our eyes and ears open. But when we think we have found evidence of a crime, the only responsible way to proceed is to make that evidence available to the police for a proper investigation.
And sometimes this gives you an extraordinary sense of how attitudes have changed.
This evening I nearly fell off my chair at one piece of evidence of how society's attitude to certain actions, and one offence in particular, has massively changed in 18 years.
My wife and I were watching the pilot episode of "Jonathan Creek" which was called "The Wrestler's Tomb" and first aired in 1997.
Back then driving while operating a handheld mobile phone was not a specific offence (though if the police caught you failing to control a car properly while doing so, they could and would prosecute you for driving without due care and attention) and the BBC could make a programme which gets laughs out of ridiculing this as silly behaviour - rather than a crime - which I don't think would be socially acceptable in a programme filmed now. (This happens in the second episode.)
But the shift in attitudes which gave me as "scales falling from the eyes" moment was on phone hacking.
One of the main characters in the first few series of the show is a freelance investigative journalist investigating miscarriages of justice. In the first episode of the programme she hacks into the answering machine of one of the people involved in the murder they are trying to solve. Nobody bats an eyelid.
And I wouldn't have batted an eyelid in 1997. In 2015 I was reaching for the pause button and saying to my wife
"What? Do you realise what she just did?"
Of course, seeing a once-mighty newspaper shut down and others embarrassed, and several of those who had been among the most powerful people in the country put on trial last year, for an offence which barely registered as a crime in the public mind in 1997 does rather change one's attitudes.
Of course we now know that phone hacking was endemic in the late 20th century and the first decade of this one, but until very recently major news organisations could and did try to use the "one rogue journalist" defence when someone was caught.
In this particular case it is possible to pinpoint exactly when the mood shifted. It was when the News of the World was accused of hacking the phone of murdered teenager Millie Dowler.
The fact that the Jonathan Creek episode could be broadcast as it was makes me think - up to about the Millie Dowler incident, lots of people knew what was going on but only the victims were really bothered, and nobody else saw them as victims. In the episode the phone hack helps catch a murderer.
The people who were hacked were assumed to be celebrities, e.g. rich and famous people, or those who the hacks involved thought might be up to no good.
And then, surprisingly suddenly, the pendulum swung, and phone hacking was seen as a symptom of a press which thought itself above the law.
Indeed, in my opinion the pendulum swung too far - there wasn't actually much wrong with the law, it just needed to be properly enforced and now it is being. Too much statutory regulation of the press will not just protect the innocent, which needs to be done, but hamper the right of the press to do their legitimate job as a public watchdog.
We need to ask if there is anything else we have been, as a society, turning a blind eye to. And if we find that there are, we need to make sure the law goes after the guilty without setting up a witch-hunt against the innocent.
At the time of writing this in January 2015, there are a lot of allegations that there is indeed something which has been ignored for too long in many corners of society - the sexual abuse of children. Equally, there is no area where more care needs to be taken to ensure that we help the authorities to go after the guilty without deploying mob rule against the innocent.
There is now strong evidence that in Rotherham and elsewhere, thousands of children have had their lives wrecked by abuse. The authorities in every area should be asking themselves, could this be happening here?
Unfortunately it is also an indisputable fact that significant numbers of totally innocent people have had their lives wrecked, been driven from their homes, lost their own children, or in at least two confirmed cases actually been murdered, because of mistaken allegations of child abuse.
We all need to keep our eyes and ears open. But when we think we have found evidence of a crime, the only responsible way to proceed is to make that evidence available to the police for a proper investigation.
Comments