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Originally Posted by niwell
Agree with these points completely.
It is worth pointing out that the media vetting in Canada may not exist to the same extent in the US, simply due to libel laws. But in cases like Patrick Brown it was vetted extensively over several months, as you said. It's also not a forgone conclusion that those who come forward are doing so for money, fame or what have you. I'm sure it does exist in some cases, but in general for every public comment lauding those coming forward there's one calling for their heads to roll.
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This is all true but I think we need to decide if as a society if we want the media to increasingly play the role of judge and jury.
The court system is far from perfect in spite of the fact that it is subject to extensive oversight measures that have teeth. No such oversight exists for the media, and even less for social media where a lot of the "rulings" about people are taking place.
I find a bit disturbing the dismissive answer everyone always gives these days which is "sure, he wasn't given a fair trial but everything pointed to him being guilty anyway, so it's no big deal..."
At this point of the whole phenomenon anyone can come out with allegations and the person involved's life and career are for all intents and purposes ruined.
The Patrick Brown case was "vetted" for sure but the Kent Hehr case most definitely was not. In the latter case anyone who follows politics knows he was on thin ice anyway, but I am not sure it would have made much of a difference in the current climate: he would have been out no matter what, just based on a series of tweets.
It did not get much coverage in North America but the case of Carl Sargeant in Wales is a troublesome one.
Word comes out that he groped someone. They won't give him or anyone else outside of a select inner circle (it seems) any details about the allegations. But he still gets sacked and his name gets dragged through the mud. Still no details communicated to him nor made public, and under considerable stress we assume, he commits suicide. Several months after his death it's still totally unclear what this was about, if it was founded or unfounded or worthy of a deeper investigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sargeant
Now, I have no idea if he did or didn't grope someone. But surely this does show quite clearly the potential dangers of this trend gone wild.