Flowers power
Following the arrest of Terence Kelly for the abduction of Cleo Smith, the Australian news network, Seven, published photos of Terrance Flowers as the suspect. They took the photos from his Facebook account, where he uses his mother's maiden name, which is also Kelly.
Seven then published them across several broadcasts, an online news article and social media posts where they identified Mr Flowers with headings such as: "Pictured: The man accused of abducting Cleo Smith".
Flowers' lawyers have claimed that the revelations have been devastating to their client, leaving him the subject of hate around the nation and the world and resulted in him being hospitalised with a severe panic attack
. Which might be over-egging the pudding a tad, but that's lawyers lawyering for you.
However, they do make a good point:
"It is of great concern to Mr Flowers and his family that a major media company would proceed with a story of this magnitude without being absolutely certain as to its accuracy."
In the race to the scoop, mainstream news outlets have to hold higher standards than the whackjobs on social media.
Both sides are lawyered up. My money's on Flowers to win. As he should.