• 

The media doesn’t like to hold itself accountable.

Quite often, press harassment is reported as “only paparazzi/trolls” (as if there’s this strange eccentric independent community) and the rest of the media are “innocent good guys” just “finding stories they happen to come across that are already out there“.

Anyone suffering from media abuse is reported as being “upset about negative coverage” or “happy with publicity but wanting more favourable coverage” of themselves. Or if they are “upset” it’s because of “trolls” or “paparazzi“.

The idea is to give an impression people complaining about their invasive behaviour are “thin-skinned” and “touchy and sensitive” .

This minimises the appalling manipulation and “behind the scenes” control games that go on.

What the media knows is most normal people wouldn’t consent to engaging with their crazy controlling behaviour where their target is manipulated to give them more “reads” and “clicks”.

So to “force” people to engage with them and give them (allegedly) consensual interviews , the media knows it has to damage their mental health and make them feel paranoid or trick them or blackmail them.

Or “pretending they’re talking about a neutral subject where the person they’ve targeted is commenting on something that could help others”

And then turning it into a horrific piece in which the person participating is “set up” in a completely different way.

For example…

When he was trying to “set me up” only last year, Ben Ellery decided to pretend/imply he was “going to help me in a just cause” and I “would be respected and supported and have an independent voice” in speaking out about Martin Bashir.

The hypocrisy of the newspapers in reporting on Martin Bashir and Princess Diana is (as everyone bullied by media knows full well) is all journalists are trained to use exactly the same deceitful tactics.

(Obviously having had media harassment/abuse for most of my life, I knew enough to be terrified – but Ben Ellery sounded quite “plausible”).

Ben Ellery made sure it was a “talk” he suggested.

NOT an e-mail or an official statement, which would have “given relevant information I’d consented to sharing ” (plus allowed me to consult others and have got advice and support beforehand).

This was Ben Ellery trying to “verbally catch me out” and “get information about me“.

Also, later on he could claim “I’d said this” and it would be “my word against his“.

If I’d (say) agreed to a phone chat, Ellery would have made some sensationalist tale up , said he had an emergency which meant he “couldn’t talk on the phone”.

Journalists are born untrustworthy liars.

I have no doubt Ben Ellery would have suggested his baby or elderly mother had cancer or something equally dramatic to “play the victim” card and emotionally manipulate me.

(when Ellery’s Mail colleague Keith Gladdis decided to abuse me in 2008, he worked with his younger sister and mother’s e-mail account to stalk me! When I confronted him later on, Gladdis started raging and said I couldn’t speak about this as it would upset his mother (!)).

Next, it would be “Could he just drop into my home or workplace for the quick chat as he was so stressed out…oh where was it? Who was I living with?”.

(Like many bullies and abusers, Ben Ellery would lie to test boundaries to see how much he could get away with, and be as sneaky as possible

Ellery would have got private investigators to get background and family details of anyone I knew so they could be added to the Daily Mail “hitlist” and “put on my records” for every journalist to access, so they could regularly “bombard everyone I knew” for information on me and effectively place me “under surveillance“).

The Ben Ellery Times interview would have come out – not centred on Martin Bashir or that ongoing case, but on ME.

Claiming I was “choosing to emotionally tell all about myself in the most sensationalist way possible” and “had invited the Press into my home and wanted to share my private details and home life and life story with the world” and as much “doxxing“/private information (which Ben Ellery would have gone behind my back to obtain) as possible.

(journalists are trained at “how to be a spiteful bully training school” to put lines into their articles indicating their targets are “boasting/flaunting/gushing” and “enjoying interacting with them.“)

Another thing Ben Ellery would have done is make sure anyone I was associated with was also targeted and their details published, so any (limited) peace I had would be destroyed.

Their details would be “added to my records” so the media could stalk and target me more in the future and any support and emotional equilibrium destroyed.

Even worse – based on my horrific experiences with the media, Ben Ellery would make up quotes from me, try to goad me into “saying things about anyone I knew” or extract information about them, and then publish these “as if I had decided of my own accord to betray my social group and say these things to a national newspaper for attention”.

Ben Ellery and his team would contact anyone I was associated with or knew from the past and tell them “she’s planning to start selling her story and telling all about you, do you want to have your say on her first?“

Everyone I had contact with, everyone who had worked to protect my privacy against monstrous bullies stalking me like Ben Ellery and his Mail/Sunday Times colleagues Keith Gladdis and Caroline Gidman would think I was “untrustworthy” and would “sell their privacy to the gutter press” first chance I got.

Ellery would have “taken the details he had got from me” and passed them onto other journalists, producers, to generate a “feeding frenzy“.

Ellery is a former Mail on Sunday journalist, and obviously he would be working in co-operation with them/had been primed to target me as “revenge” for me blogging about them abusing me.

The Guardian and the BBC all would be told I was “out there” and as I was now “allegedly consenting to give my details and couldn’t prove otherwise” they could “join in on the feeding frenzy” and violate my privacy.

I would have no comeback or defence (as Ben Ellery would bring up the “alleged “agreed interview“) and they could “all join in“.

A standard way journalists are trained to bully people is to claim “well, you agreed to give this interview before so you’re clearly “asking for it and can’t say no to us”” at first contact so their victim feels shamed and like they can’t say no.

The Press has being trying to do this to me for all of my life.

Then – later on – as I tried to recover from the betrayal and manipulation and abuse, it would be reported as:

“Dramatic controversial attention seeking failed former Oxford girl upset because she decided to speak out and was trying to sell her story and seeking publicity and didn’t get the favourable coverage she wanted”.

If I tried to complain about this, or explain what had happened to me, people would think I was “asking for it” or had clearly “decided to seek fame and it had all gone wrong“.

Once more, I’d have the shame and loneliness of trying to process media abuse solo.

And I would live with the shame and the trauma of this.

Media abusers like to destroy their victim twice.

Once, by harassing and abusing them.

And second by setting them up so they are isolated and won’t be believed.