Jemma Beale’s repeated lies caused an innocent man to spend two years in jail, and untold anxiety to many others. Part of Beale’s motive appears to have been to make her lover jealous, but she told a former girlfriend that she did it in order to get compensation money from the government. She was tried and convicted for her crimes and is now in jail.
You’d think that after all that her guilt would have been established beyond reasonable doubt. Yet with what strange new respect for the presumption of innocence (even after conviction!) does the BBC report her case:
Jemma Beale: Rape claim ‘liar’ loses conviction appeal
A “serial liar” who invented false rape and sexual assault allegations has failed in a bid to clear her name.
Jemma Beale, 27, from Hounslow, west London, was jailed for 10 years in August 2017 after claiming she was sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine over the space of three years.
She challenged her convictions for perjury and perverting the course of justice and her sentence.
Her bid was rejected by three judges at the Court of Appeal.
Beale’s lawyer Gillian Jones QC argued the trial judge should have given the jury directions about the “danger of assumptions, myths and stereotypes” relating to victims of sexual offences.
I agree with Beale’s lawyer. The trial judge should have warned about the danger of the currently fashionable assumption, myth and stereotype that “women never lie about rape”. Fortunately the jury saw through Beale anyway.
I’m being thick: what’s the import of the non-linked highlighted letters?
There’s a higher meaning here that I’m evidently missing
Just to show that each word is a separate hyperlink to a different news report. I’ve seen it done that way sometimes and was trying it out.
aha. I thought you were trying to send some important message with the acronym SNR/PI/CF/WNL
There’s got to be a good conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
In the meantime, more power to your elbow – I think this is an excellent innovation. 🙂
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40525479
‘Kevin Lynott, who led the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into the false allegations, said Beale had “been exposed as a serial liar”.’
Yeah, it’s a direct quotation from an earlier article, rather than scare quotes. I think they’re legit, here, they’re reinforcing something already said.
Excellent idea when consecutive words are different links. I shall recommand that Samizdatistas employ that technique from now on.
it’s a direct quotation from an earlier article, rather than scare quotes
I’m more inclined to think that “serial liar” is an idiom and it is a common writing style to put them in quotes.
I remain doubtful. The chronologically first article (the one I linked to) uses the quotation marks correctly (in the strict sense that they are used to quote someone, who is referenced later in the article. The title of that article was “‘Serial liar’ convicted of false rape claims” – there’s then a follow-up article titled “‘Serial liar’ jailed after bogus rape claims”, and then this one, “Jemma Beale: Rape claim ‘liar’ loses conviction appeal”.
All have very similar lead ins (the bit in bold under the picture, I don’t know the technical term for it) – so similar, that I’d be confident in saying that they’ve copy and pasted the previous article each time, changed some words, and hit “publish”.
It’s utterly lazy writing, but it doesn’t appear that they’re shying away from a judgement on her guilt. They haven’t put quotes round the word “invented”, for instance – they’ve flat out stated that the claims were invented.
rape by non europeans in europe is out of control, and women are still feeling the compulsion to lie about european men raping them.
is it just me, or is western civilization headed off a cliff?
Having viewed the photo, I’m strongly of the opinion that her pathological lying was “caused by”, i.e., was the fault of, the fact that she is a really ugly landwhale.
She’s still more believable that Mrs May.
The “feminism” (“Third Wave” Feminism) of the BBC is part of their general Frankfurt School of Marxism “Social Justice Warrior” stance.
I AGREE with my old opponent Dr Sean Gabb – that we would know if we had a Conservative government, as the first thing it would do is get rid of the BBC Tax (the “License Fee”).
Except that they haven’t denied that she was lying. They’ve stated, explicitly, that she “invented” the claims (quotes mine, in the correct usage of quotes, in the same way as they correctly used quotes). They have called her, accurately, a liar.
Again – they didn’t use scare quotes, they accurately quoted the officer by calling her a “serial liar”.
Fine. I for one am absolutely sick and tired of seeing quotation-marks’ being called “scare quotes” or “sneer quotes.” Such usage has become so common that one wonders whether the writers can imagine quotation marks being used simply to convey that they convey simply the idea of “so-called [term-within-quotes].”
[EXAMPLE. I might write,
Or, to be clearer, I might have written my meaning in so many words:
.
Neonsnake and Runcie both do good analyses of the possibilities of the use of quotation marks around the word liar in Natalie’s headline.
The question here is really whether Natalie’s use of the term “scare quotes” is gratuitous on her part or an unfortunate lapse into what is currently a pernicious bad habit of writers; or whether she uses it specifically to call into question the Beeb’s carefulness or its conscience in its writing.
.
I want to make it crystal-clear that I don’t for a moment call into question Natalie’s good faith in any of her writing, including this. Nor of her skill in writing English either.
My comment is meant solely out of my “word-mavenry,” so to speak, and as a matter of technical interest.
It’s been maybe a decade since I looked at Samizdata, so bear with me, ok? The culture may have changed.
Our purpose here is not to excarbate outrage culture. It’s to be, as libertarians, objective.
This post is *not* objective.
The facts obtain as follows: she lied. She was caught. She was sentenced appropriately. The BBC reported appropriately.
There’s no “scare quotes”. There’s no “third wave feminism”.
The Beeb, in this instance, are accurate. Don’t be fooled into thinking they’re playing an agenda that doesn’t exist.
Just to observe that my own comment just above is, as usual, not technically flawless. Plizz to excuse.
Yeah,but the purpose here is to be clear on whether the term “scare quotes* is gratuitous or not.
My stance is, yes it is. It’s incorrect.
Seriously, WTF?
It’s factually incorrect. It exposes us to all sorts of shit.
Also, guys, what the hell? When did we stop believing in libertarianism and start believing in authoritarianism?
It’s been a very odd experience going through old posts.
Basically – guys. behave. Look back at old, first principles. Right now, you’re failing us old OG’s, ok?
“Good” comment, Julie.
😉
Neonsnake, NS’s use of the term “scare quote” might well be off here, on examination of the circumstances. But, (a), it’s not as if the BBC deserves a lot of protection, (b), it’s not a huge point, and (c), looking at the hundreds of times NS has provided excellent accurate thought-provoking content here, and comparing it to all of the errors she may have made – well, one maybe so far now – I’d say that the culture here avoids hammering. I’m a newbie commenter compared to you, but a longtime reader, so I’d say the culture remains as accepting as it was ten years ago.
Thanks, bobby. 😀
PS, bobby.
So’s yours. 😀
I don’t know about this. Using quotes here is basically saying “someone said this, I don’t necessarily agree with it” journalistically. By quoting it inline like that I’m afraid I think that I agree with Natalie, there is definitely a color of “we are a bit dubious whether this is true or not”, or at the very least “we are not expressing an opinion on whether this is true or not” which immediately makes one wonder: why? Is there some unstated doubt about it? The article is a bit riddled with this like “‘system of justice'” and “‘lied to get money'”.
I imagine the intention is not to actually convey doubt about the veracity of the claim but rather to put some objective distance, to make their journalism judgement free. I think if that was their intention is is extremely easy to misinterpret. I also wonder if they afforded the same courtesy to Mahad Cassim when they reported his case. (I couldn’t find the article to confirm, so I don’t know. However, were I pressed, I might hazard a guess.)
BTW, another interesting thing is that they switch between single and double quotes. Looks like they use single in headings and double in body, which I am going to assume is BBC style, but it seems oddly inconsistent to me.
Single vs. double quotes: which inside and which outside a quote that contains a quote? Is a puzzlement. In the U.S., the outermost quotation marks are double, and then, in theory, they alternate so that the innermost marks are single if there are two, or — theoretically — four inner quotes, but if the innermost quote is the third in this set of Matryoshka dolls, it would be immediately enclosed by double quotation marks.
Whereas in the U.K., the convention is the reverse, or at least so it used to be; as far as I know, anyway.
But now, in this horrible age of international Internet, one hardly knows how it’s to be done. (The only thing I know almost for sure is that if you begin with a quotation mark, sooner or later you’re supposed to use another to “close” the quote, thus signalling that it’s over. Balancing parens often eludes me, however, so I am suspicious as to my own rate of success in following the rule.)
I go back and forth myself when I put up offerings here, as to whether to lead with single or double marks. I do try, however, to be consistent within a single comment. Alas, punctuational perfection tends to escape me, so I hope I don’t cause you four-day migraines, Fraser. I cause me enough headaches as it is. :>(
Natalie is an excellent writer. Crikey, I still use her post on “A law abiding person has nothing to hide?” as my go-to when discussing ID cards/surveillance state with their proponents (and that piece was written in 2003!). This isn’t a hammering, it just made me wince, as the post appears to be looking for offence where none exists. By no means am I defending the BBC wholesale as an institution or as some paragon of impartial reporting, just that in this particular instance we’re open to accusations of whatever the mirror equivalent of virtue-signalling is, I guess.
Thanks for all the comments. Fraser Orr is right to say that when it comes to the BBC’s use of quote marks I do not give the Beeb the benefit of the doubt.
There is a reason for this. My soul was embittered by several years writing for the “Biased BBC” website.
Stand back, there’s a rant a-coming.
After the London terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005 Helen Boaden, then the Director of BBC News, sent out a much-criticised memo instructing BBC journalists not to refer to the perpetrators as terrorists. It came out that the BBC actually went back through its own accounts of the atrocity and replaced the word “terrorist” with “militant” or “bomber” when speaking in its own voice, and would only use the word “terrorist” when quoting someone.
As I said the following year in a post called “But … you talk like war crimes are a bad thing”,
And that has remained the BBC’s policy so far as I can see. A couple of times people wrote in to Biased BBC and queried whether the BBC were really doing this, and in reply I made posts such as this one saying “Yes”.
The Biased BBC archives have suffered from link-rot so that although I think most of my posts still exist they are hard to find unless one already knows what one is looking for, but believe me, I came across more examples of selective use of scare quotes than the ones I listed there. For some reason these two BBC stories three days apart stuck in my head well enough for me to be able to search them out.
16 May 2009: Congress hails India poll victory
(India’s Congress party did indeed win a fairly decisive election victory over the Hindu nationalist BJP and other parties. No scare quotes.)
19 May 2009: Sri Lanka leader hails ‘victory’.
This time the word “victory” came hygienically wrapped in quote marks. As readers may recall this was actually one of the most crushing military victories of modern times. I said in a Biased BBC post called “What more do you want?”
I haven’t changed much.
While I appreciate the general praise of Natalie included in some comments above that criticise her, the fact is that she has a point, and her critics are missing the context and her point.
As the James Taranto story (last of the ones under ‘Thursday, September 12, 2002’ half-way down page) shows, Natalie is only too ready to recognise legitimate quotes even in debatable situations. And as the first line of the ‘Home to roost‘ story second from top of that page shows, she uses ironic quotes herself when proper to do so.
is not an exact BBC headline quote but it well mocks the kind of thing Natalie and I both saw in our old BiasedBBC days. Such quotes are correctly described as scare quotes (or biased quotes or deceitful quotes or whatever term you desire). To give the lie direct merely with quote marks is not easy, but scare quotes are useful for suggestio falsi and suppressio veri, and you can be biased in your application of scare quotes. The briefest search of the BBC’s website found
not
although we all know that the latter is a more accurate description – and would be the one used if the subject were Hillary (when it would be a less accurate description).
So I share anyone’s contempt for millennials so ignorant they don’t know that quotes can ever have an un-ironic meaning, but don’t confuse Natalie with such a person.
ADDED DURING EDIT: snap! – Natalie and I have just made similar points both relating to our BiasedBBC experience.
@Julie, I am totally down with yanks using doubles and brits using singles. What I think is weird in this article (and presumably in auntie’s style book) is that they use singles in headings and doubles in body. That just seems oddly inconsistent to me.
Certain subtle rhetorical tricks rely for their effect on common fallacies or misunderstandings in the reader. Some in particular rely on the fact that different people can interpret the same sentence or question in radically different ways depending on their beliefs, assumptions, prior knowledge, and cultural background. (The ‘dog whistle effect’.) This allows rhetoric that, taken literally, is innocent and harmless, but when filtered through the audience’s understanding becomes incendiary. And the beauty – from the user’s point of view – is that they can’t be accused of doing it, because the incendiary interpretation is based entirely on things in the reader’s own head. It’s based on the reader’s own beliefs and assumptions – even if those are assumptions about what their enemies believe and intend to say. If anything evil is going on, they can say, it’s the reader doing it, not the writer.
It’s also a particularly subtle and effective way to reinforce a social norm – if you induce the reader to think of it for themselves, the norm-establishing power of it increases. Thus, whether or not the author of this article intended any believe-the-victim third wave feminism with the quotes, the point is *you* knew about it and made the match to this situation. You felt for a moment society’s pressure to conform. And you did it to yourself.
The ideal for norm-enforcement is self-policing. Society doesn’t want to have to tell you every time you break one of its norms, it wants you to know what they are and avoid breaking them yourself. It’s got you to the point where you’re seeing the message even in places where it isn’t actually there. (Fnord!)
I tend to agree with Neonsnake that in this case it was probably unintentional. But it’s not always, and it’s often impossible to prove one way or the other. We can’t read the author’s mind. If they haven’t actually confessed that they meant it that way, they have ‘plausible deniability’. I would argue that when this happens, the more interesting aspect to it often isn’t that they tried the trick (after all, BBC bias isn’t news), but that it worked on you.
Nullius in Verba (March 30, 2019 at 3:38 pm), perhaps you are familiar with the example of exploiting the viewer’s desire to connect dots in ‘Bowling for Columbine’, analysed by Hardy.
I don’t think Moore is brilliant – I think Moore is a pigmy compared to Goebbels – but the example Hardy discusses is slick.
In general, I believe that if the words contained in the quotes can be found to have been uttered by another person, then I treat them as a straight quote (presumably true about the word “heroes” in the post about Flight 93. The links are all gone, so I can’t check, I’m afraid).
In the case of the Michael Flynn article, there’s nothing underneath that includes someone say he was “lying”, and, um, the episode is 45 minutes long, so I’m not gonna listen to it!
In this instance, the words “serial liar” come from a Kevin Lynott, in charge of the investigation; unhelpfully (for me) *not in the article Natalie linked to*, but one that took me two clicks to get to, and which has flagrantly had sections copy-pasted each time the BBC ran a new story on the matter *shrug*. They should have, as a matter of clear writing, included the original statement from Kevin Lynott that they were continuing to quote, but they didn’t, which is very sloppy! That’s my take, anyway.
But maybe I’m wrong, after all. As you all say, it wouldn’t be unheard of for the BBC to employ bad-faith writing (nor for me to be wrong, for that matter)
All that being said, I was very pleased to accidentally re-discover this site a week or so back (whilst enjoying the “socialist paradise”* that is Cuba, coincidentally enough) and very pleased that it’s still going.
*yep, those are scare quotes.
Niall,
Yes, that’s the sort of thing I mean. Although it’s very common. We don’t need to go to an extreme example like ‘Bowling…’ to find instances of it.
In this case, I suspect the reason for the quote marks is that words like ‘liar’ have an emotive and pejorative use, as well as a factual, descriptive one. They’re perceived as rude and judgemental, and authors writing for the BBC are supposed to avoid anything thar risks giving that impression. I suspect the author was aiming for a neutral ‘just report the facts’ air, and was concerned that using emotive terms like ‘serial liar’ could be confused for the BBC making a moral judgement and using an insulting epithet, rather than simply reporting the court’s factual judgement that she told untruths. The aim was to clarify that they’re using it because it was the word used by participants in the court case, not the BBC.
I sometimes have the same sort of problem with the word ‘authoritarian’. My intended meaning is generally the technical one – somebody with the belief that society has the right and duty to impose its collective will on its members, for their own good and for the good of society, in matters not pertaining to preventing uninformed/unconsented harm. While I don’t agree with it, I can at least understand the point of view, and understand how its proponents can think it moral. I’m not always intending a moral judgement by it – often I’m just making a technical classification of the political belief type. But it has a common pejorative sense alluding to the historical use of gulags and gas chambers, and is widely seen as an attempt at “Argumentum Ad Hitlerum”.
And while it’s good that it has acquired this cultural resonance – people instinctively see authoritarianism as a bad thing – it can lead to confusion and upset when I apparently try to equate their mild ‘for their own good’ nudge politics to cattle-trucking innocent children into Concentration Camps!
They used to have the same problem with technical terms for mental disabilities becoming playground insults, which meant you couldn’t name your charity after it without raising a snigger. Words acquire multiple meanings, some of them bad.
So I suspect that the words were put in quotes because it was perceived as rather un-BBC language to be using, not the sort of thing for neutral reporting. But it’s ambiguous and easily misunderstood.
I think what makes these quotations even more misleading is that they were unattributed and just used inline. I could say ‘Natalie a “conspiracy theorist” seems to be putting forward a particular viewpoint about the BBC that is “utter bullshit”‘. No doubt I could find some people who would describe Natalie as a “conspiracy theorist”, no doubt I could find somebody that thinks her OP is “utter bullshit” but just because some random person thinks that doesn’t add to our perception of its accuracy at all. A quote without attribution is, in a sense, meaningless. It is easy enough to find someone who will say pretty much anything. ‘Natalie “an alien invader from Mars” puts forth this theory “deserving of a Nobel Prize in Literature” about the BBC “a well known Russian FSB front in London”.’ Give me ten minutes and fifty bucks and I can get someone to say those things.
I have read the article a couple of times and still have no idea who is being quoted for calling this person a liar, or who is being quoted when it says “system of justice”. When you read an article you base your judgement on the reliability of the writer (or transitively of the editor who allowed it). The fact that the writer doesn’t stand up and say she is a “liar” but defers that opinion to persons unknown leads you to think the writer isn’t sure about the perpetrator’s dishonesty.
So I think really it is the lack of attribution that makes these quotes so disturbing.
Fraser, re yours at March 30, 2019 at 3:30 pm,
Oh, I understood perfectly well what bugs you (or perhaps I should say, “interests you”?) about the BBC’s varying and, at least at first glance, inconsistent use of single vs. double quotation marks. And I also thought it was good that you were moving away from the personalities that had emerged during the discussion.
I just wanted to inject something non-controversial, followed by a little rueful humor at my own expense, into the discussion. At that point the heated portion seemed to have run down, and I thought it would be good to end it in a non-argumentative and, hopefully, slightly upbeat manner.
*nods* You won’t, because it’s not there, which hugely dismantles my case – that’s what I meant when I said that the quotation, unhelpfully, comes from a prior article.
1: ‘Serial liar’ convicted of false rape claims is, I think, the first article on the subject, from 6/07/17. In it, there’s this paragraph: ‘Kevin Lynott, who led the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into the false allegations, said Beale had “been exposed as a serial liar”.’
The lead-in is this: “A “serial liar” who made a series of false rape allegations has been convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice.”
I believe that, in the case of this article in isolation, it’s clear that the “serial liar” quote is, indeed, a quotation. Is that fair? Or, at least, understandable why I would believe that?
2: ‘Serial liar’ jailed after bogus rape claims is the second article, from 27/08/17.
The lead-in is this: “A “serial liar” who made a series of bogus sexual assault allegations against 15 men has been jailed for 10 years.” – note the similarity to the previous article.
3: Jemma Beale: Rape claim ‘liar’ loses conviction appeal is then, the final article.
Lead-in as follows: A “serial liar” who invented false rape and sexual assault allegations has failed in a bid to clear her name.
So, in my view, the first article is clear that it is quoting Kevin Lynott, but the following two are not. But, do you see what I mean about the similarities between the headlines and lead-ins, which led me to conclude that whoever wrote the second and third article started by copying the previous one, changing “false” to “bogus”, then to “invented”, and didn’t realise that they’ve not included the paragraph which included the full quote.
To answer your question, the person they’ve quoted is Kevin Lynott. (I can only assume that it was Lady Justice Hallett who was being quoted in the “system of justice” part)
Does that make at least some sense?
Which was, of course, me. I offer a wholehearted apology for the “heated”.
Niall, thanks for the link to David Hardy’s takedown of Bowling for Columbine. (Never saw any of MM’s flicks, don’t expect that to change!
As I daresay most Samizdatistas know, David Hardy is a rather Big Noise among us anti-gun-grabber types over here.