21st Century Wire
Oct 2012
Has Rupert Murdoch’s Times Newspaper also joined the BBC’s practice of covering for child abusers in high places?
On Friday Oct 11, former child actor and now investigative journalist, Ben Fellows, published his own sordid account of his personal experiences growing up in show business and working at the BBC. The following week, his story was picked-up by the London newspaper Daily Express on Oct 17th.
Ben Fellows on the BBC’s News 24 in 2006.
What the public is not aware of however, is that the Murdoch-owned Times newspaper in London had also summoned Fellows to an interview regarding his story the following day on Thursday Oct 18th.
(Read Ben’s full account of interview and commentary here)
“Since the original story I wrote, a lot of readers, people and other members of the media have been asking me to name names, and actually accusing me of feeding the abuse system by not naming names in my initial story. So when the Times contacted me, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to names names.”
Fellows continues, “It’s all rather easy to pin the entire scandal on a deceased, former celebrity like Jimmy Savile, but if you’re going to name the names of currently active entertainment professionals and politicians, you have to go with the biggest and strongest media outlet because you will get sued and the Times told me, ‘You have nothing to worry about, we have the most powerful lawyers in the world’ – and that gave me the confidence to name names”.
According to Fellows, he was interviewed by Jack Malvern, a veteran and senior writer with the Times at the Novotel in Greenwich last Thursday, with the promise that his story would go out in the Saturday morning edition of the Times, but when Saturday arrived, no story appeared – and thus, no names were named.
“The fact they haven’t run my story worries me, because they asked me to talk and I did – and now I’m not sure which way to turn”, explains Fellows.
“It made me feel like I had been ‘debriefed’ and not interviewed, and that maybe the only reason I was summoned there was to give information to them (the Murdoch press) for their own internal use.”
The irony of this situation is too much to ignore, as the Murdoch empire’s flagship ‘anti-paedophile’ newspaper, The Sun, is pulling no punches with the BBC over their Jimmy Savile cover-up, since the BBC has been exposed for moth-balling two internal investigations over child abuse within their state-funded media realm.
In the case of Fellows, he appears to have hand-delivered a number of top show business and political personality names to the Times, names whom he has witnessed first-hand to be involved with a wide range of highly inappropriate and illegal activities – including predatory advances on a child actor (Fellows), offering and consuming of Class A narcotics, and the promise of success by top producers in exchange for sex. He maintains that some of the names the Times is holding include a few of the most powerful individuals in the entertainment industry.
One name which Fellows has mentioned already is that of MP Ken Clarke. Interestingly, Clarke has just been linked to predator Savile this week, as Savile was handed the keys to Broadmoor secure hospital in 1988 – under the watch of Minister Ken Clarke.
Fellows believed that the reason the Times has killed the story is because one of the names he gave was a celebrity who SKY TV has a heavy amount invested in for the coming season.
“They wanted me to name names, but not the ones I gave them!” said Fellows.
“I had no idea that this person was to be the star of SKY this coming season when I named them in my Times interview. Now they are sitting on the whole story because it conflicts with their organisation’s plans this year. The hypocrisy is clear to see, and very disappointing to say the least.”
“What the Times is doing here, is no different than how the BBC is covering for itself. And the end result of both cover-ups is that the public have less knowledge of child abuse in the system. I think our major media outlets are failing the public, and I now it’s there for everyone to see.”
So now the Times has joined the BBC in covering-up reported activities of people in positions of power and influence, in their own self-interest.
“I was offered an ‘Exclusive’, but I did not respond to what this offer alluded to because it sounded like code for ‘money’, but I fully expected them to run my story with so many high profile people mentioned”, said Fellows.
Tonight’s episode of Panorama on BBC is nothing more than a late move to try and repair what is clearly a broken and corrupt media giant.
Similarly, Tuesday’s appearance at a House Select Committee by George Entwistle, current Director General of the BBC, is unlikely to yield much, as Entwistle, then Director of Programming at the BBC, was also the man who allegedly pulled the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ investigation into Savile’s unsavoury habits last Dec 2011. Certainly, the BBC will be expected to produce some sacrificial lamb to draw a line under this scandal, but it’s unclear as yet who that will be.
Fellows adds here, “I am concerned that when it’s all said and done, the BBC and the government are just going to have Jimmy Savile ‘done and dusted’ and maybe pin some conviction on an old employee, then close the book on what is clearly an institutional and social disease which has infected the BBC and other corridors of power in Britain”.
How long will the Times sit on this story, and if they do run it, will they name the names that Fellows delivered to them?
Considering the weight of allegations from the Savile Affair, we all can agree that it’s in a free society’s best interest for any major newspaper to print a story which deals with the protection of children – which is certainly, at least in our opinion - in the public’s interest.
….
RELATED STORY: Murdoch Paper is Covering Up For Child Abusers