Daily Mail = Epic, epic fail
Oct. 16th, 2009 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smiley_bI tweeted about this earlier on, calling it the most vile piece of journalism I've read this week (and considering the amount of press coverage there has been in Ireland this week about Stephen Gately's death, that's saying a lot).
Jan Moir, a columnist in the UK Daily Mail (not in the Irish one, this was not published over here, unsurprisingly) wrote a digusting piece on Stephen Gately's death, where she basically said that all the coverage has been "sugar-coated" and implies that it was his lifestyle (drinking, possibly smoking cannibis that night) that led to his death. She calls the circumstances surrounding his death "sleazy" and opines that "After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards. Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room. "
This is despite the fact that Andrew Cowles had to release a statement yesterday saying that Georgi was a friend of theirs, who was staying in the spare room at the villa. And who among us hasn't gone out with friends and decided to go back to theirs and keep the party going, then crash there??
Link to the Daily Mail article is here; excellent blog post I linked to on Twitter earlier on is here
It's important to note that the Press Complaints Commission (PPC) has so far gotten 6000 complaints about this article, (and their website actually crashed) and the headline has been changed since this morning - it's now "A Strange Lonely and Troubling Death" as opposed to "Why There's Nothing Natural about Stephen Gately's death"
Believe it or not, I'm actually at a loss for words here - the whole article is just vile and disgusting and in incredibly poor taste, when you consider that Stephen hasn't even been buried yet. As for her assertion that "Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again," I have 2 words for her: Cormac McAnallan
And have just seen via Twitter that Jan Moirs has released an unrepentant statement, saying "I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones." Link
Dude, there are no undertones in that article; it's loud and clear what she thinks!!
And now The Guardian bites back: Link
And he's got my feelings in a nutshell: "still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo."
Jan Moir, a columnist in the UK Daily Mail (not in the Irish one, this was not published over here, unsurprisingly) wrote a digusting piece on Stephen Gately's death, where she basically said that all the coverage has been "sugar-coated" and implies that it was his lifestyle (drinking, possibly smoking cannibis that night) that led to his death. She calls the circumstances surrounding his death "sleazy" and opines that "After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards. Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room. "
This is despite the fact that Andrew Cowles had to release a statement yesterday saying that Georgi was a friend of theirs, who was staying in the spare room at the villa. And who among us hasn't gone out with friends and decided to go back to theirs and keep the party going, then crash there??
Link to the Daily Mail article is here; excellent blog post I linked to on Twitter earlier on is here
It's important to note that the Press Complaints Commission (PPC) has so far gotten 6000 complaints about this article, (and their website actually crashed) and the headline has been changed since this morning - it's now "A Strange Lonely and Troubling Death" as opposed to "Why There's Nothing Natural about Stephen Gately's death"
Believe it or not, I'm actually at a loss for words here - the whole article is just vile and disgusting and in incredibly poor taste, when you consider that Stephen hasn't even been buried yet. As for her assertion that "Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again," I have 2 words for her: Cormac McAnallan
And have just seen via Twitter that Jan Moirs has released an unrepentant statement, saying "I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones." Link
Dude, there are no undertones in that article; it's loud and clear what she thinks!!
And now The Guardian bites back: Link
And he's got my feelings in a nutshell: "still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo."
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-17 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-17 10:22 pm (UTC)To be honest, everyone seems to be giving out about the article being homophobic; I was much more upset about how spiteful she was about a decent young lad who died far too young, I felt she basically danced on his grave and that's why I'm so cross about it. I found it hugely insulting and I can't believe she didn't even have the good grace to apologise.
OK, need to stop now or I'll be ranting all night...