Sky News & the BBC Not Interested in Asking Real Questions on Paedophilia
by Neil Foster | CPG - Hub -
When major ‘news’ outlets send FOI requests you would think they’d have the intelligence to ask the pertinent questions. Unfortunately, Sky News and the BBC seem to be lacking in the intelligence department.
A recent report from Sky News titled ‘Child Safety: 181 Workers Sacked By Councils’ was published in Dec. 2013.
http://news.sky.com/story/1183290/child-safety-181-workers-sacked-by-councils
Following that report, which supposedly came about after an FOI request, it has now been reported, by the BBC of all people, again following an FOI request, that:-
‘At least 959 teachers and school staff have been accused of having a relationship with a pupil in the past five years, the BBC has learned.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/25367715
The first question that comes to mind is whether the FOI was sent to the same councils and whether this is the same FOI request, which was used by Sky, and different figures extrapolated from it.
Setting that aside, and assuming that the BBC would send their own FOI request, I wonder why the BBC should do this when this ‘news’ was put into the public sphere a month earlier?
The Sky report states that 181 council staff were sacked in regard to the council’s view that they were ‘a risk to children’.
This report only covers the year 2012/2013. It states that of 3651 workers investigated, only 695 were subsequently investigated by the police. As a result of these police investigations 181 lost their jobs. At no point in this report does it state that any of those investigated were convicted for sexual abuse against children.
The BBC article covers a far greater time period from 2008 – 2013.
Again, nowhere does it state how many of those investigated totaling 959 were subsequently charged with a criminal offence. In at least 254 cases there were police charges but there is no report of a single conviction within that time period.
A case is cited further down the article reporting a teacher who was given a 12 year prison term for serious sexual crimes against a female student. However, there is no date given for this case and it could well be outside the stated time period and has obviously nothing to do with the FOI as it has already been stated by the BBC that they don’t know if any criminal prosecutions have occurred.
The BBC article is extremely disingenuous on a number of fronts and needs further analysis.
The first point to answer is the statement that:-
‘One charity said it was not surprised but unions say many claims are false.’
Firstly, why is the charity not named? And secondly, how many claims are false according to the unions?
Regarding the amount of false claims and the effect this can have on those accused, back in 2011, teachers were given anonymity from suffering the consequences of malicious accusations.
This fact is not mentioned in either of the reports.
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