Friday 14 May 2010

Recommended reading

Septicisle has written an excellent post on his blog Obsolete about the media coverage of Noemie Lenoir's suicide attempt.

Several tabloids seemed to think the best way to cover this story was to put a picture of her wearing not much on the front of their paper and refer to her as the 'M&S babe'.

Anton has looked at the Mail's coverage of the same story, and found their unpleasant obsession with speculating as to why it happened.

Callous, tawdry, unfeeling and demeaning are just some of the words used to describe the media reaction.

The Editor's Code of Conduct clause on 'intrusion into grief or shock' includes:

In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively.

But, as Anton points out, rather than giving us sensitivity:

It's a question of being as graphic as possible, as sleazy as possible, of digging up as much dirt as possible in as short a space of time as possible.

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