(Thumbnail image from The Guardian)
An autopsy has concluded that Irish pop star and Boyzone band member Stephen Gately died in his apartment in Spain on Oct. 10 of natural causes, but an article titled 'Why there is Nothing Natural about Stephen Gately’s Death' is what is upsetting most fans this week.
Daily Mail reporter Jan Moir wrote the article last Friday, which many readers feel linked his death to a homosexual lifestyle. Furious backlash has since flooded the Internet. We’re looking at how media are reacting to the opinionated piece, with sources like Sky News, The Guardian, the blog Anorak, and the blog broadstuff.
Let’s start with Sky News reporter Mark Stone, who says it was obvious even from the title of the article that this story was factually incorrect.
“She said healthy, fit, 33-year old men do not just climb into their pajamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again. Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Now I think anyone knows that young people can just die and as we know he did die of what’s described as a pulmonary oedema. The cause of that is heart failure and at the moment there’s nothing else to suggest that anything else happened.”
The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker is much harsher in condemning Moir’s article, calling her rant a ‘gratuitous piece of gay-bashing’.
“It’s like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiraling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.”
On the UK blog Anorak, one blogger says Moir is now the envy of opinion journalist everywhere for her fast track to fame.
“And let’s not be too hard on Jan Moir, who has only achieved what other papers and ahack dream of: she has caused a debate and enabled the media to overshadow the subject of their story. The story is not about Stephen Gately – the story is about the media looking at Stephen Gately. Job done.”
A post by Alan Patrick on the blog broadstuff doesn’t criticize Moir. Instead, it brings up the issue that free speech defends the journalist’s opinions as much as those critics who condemn her.
“Trying to shut her up is just wrong, wrong, wrong. If you genuinely support Free Speech it means you have the right to argue with her but not to try to get her shut up, and personally I abhor the crude ad-hominems!”
Are the Internet and the media rightfully condemning Jan Moir?
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