BBC Newsnight Child Abuse Scandal
How new digital media has played a role in the investigation
In summary what has happend is that ITV presenter Phillip Schofeild handed a peice of paper that he got from the internet to the Prime minster on live telivison. This list showed a list of alleged pedophiles and gay couples, this lead to controversy as the list was un reliable as it was pulled from the net. This then led to the BBC on newsnight putting allegations against Lord McApline who is a previous conserative party member. They alleged him to be a pervet without having any evidence which has lead to the BBC & ITV being fined for accusing someone and putting their life at risk with abusive messages which resulted into the public using social media "twitter" to abuse Lord Mcapline including tweets from Sally Bercow the House of commons speakers wife. All the allegations are false and Lord Mcalpine is now taking compensation for the damages that were made to him from BBC, ITV and the people who tweeted him.
To summarise its amazing how what you say on Twitter can be used to back fire on you and can be used as evidence in court. This is the negative affect of social media when people use it for the wrong reasons, it is there to communicate with each other and to socialize, not to be used as a way to abuse someone or talk bad about someone regardless of "freedom of speech". I feel the people who did abuse Lord Mcalpine with these tweets should be banned from Twitter for 2 years as a punishment, that will hurt them ;).
Tory peer Lord McAlpine said it was
"terrifying" to find himself "a figure of public hatred" after he was wrongly
implicated in child abuse allegations.
He also said the BBC had left him with a "legacy" that "can't be repaired
He added the BBC "should have called me" and he would have told them "that it was complete rubbish".
"They could have saved themselves a lot of agonising and money, actually, if they'd just made that telephone call."
Mr Reid urged those who had named Lord McAlpine on the social media site Twitter to come forward.
He said Sally Bercow, wife of Commons Speaker John Bercow, had not yet been in touch to apologise for her tweets.
She tweeted on Thursday that she maintained her tweet was not libellous, "just foolish".
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