Bag's Rants

The powerof the media.

I was reading this article about our strange punishment process that we call justice in the UK.

It seems that this woman wants to remove from sale some good educational books because her child was molested by the guy that wrote them. Read here. Now I can understand her wanting revenge but why is it that every crackpot that want to go beyond our justice system gets space in the papers and in the news to spout their views. Jeez. I had to go to the trouble to sign up and write in a blog to put my bigoted views forward.

I remember a Star Trek episode where one of the main characters was going to be saved by a procedure created by a war criminal on her worlds inhabitants. I was going to save her life as the prognosis was not good but she refused because of how the treatment was developed. Of course being one of the main characters meant she survived without the procedure. But she had her principles. I have a slightly different view, wouldn't you know it, I think that if the results of the experiments were destroyed then all those lives were lost in vain. Sure, vilify the guy or creature, but don't throw away what was learnt. Knowledge is not good or evil but it's the use to which it is put that can be perverted.

Back to this guy. This is how he makes a living. OK, He ain't going to get many home visits with children from now on. Not unless the parents are in on it also anyway. Hey! It's not unknown. To deprive him of his livelihood is not a currently recognised punishment unless his livelihood involves directly interacting with children which this one does not.

Could you imagine it if every criminal couldn't have a livelihood after they came out of the nick. Wonder how they would get on in life. On the dole. Unlikely, if being unemployed was part of the punishment. They would have to distance themselves from wife's and children and I wonder what all these would have to do to make a living.

I know sometime, and this is one of those cases, that we should do more to protect the vulnerable members of our society but we don't. We have to live with it and until our justice system includes destroying peoples livelihoods as part of the punishment for crimes then perhaps the media would be better off just leaving these people to grieve in peace.

I'm actually wondering what is the benefit of a free press when they do things like this and yet allow our wonderful government and media figures to get away with what they do.

posted by Bag @ 11:31 am