British bloggers and Twitter users have been on their second crusade of the week. Two days after oil company Trafigura was cut down to size, an article by Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir linking Stephen Gateley’s death to the fact of his being gay was seized upon as unalloyed homophobia.
The Press Complaints Commission received so many complaints that its website crashed and it was forced to add a large “if you are complaining about the Jan Moir piece click here” link to channel the mass of visitors. Charlie Brooker highlights the irony of the Daily Mail being on the wrong end of a moral panic:
Jan’s paper, the Daily Mail, absolutely adores it when people flock to Ofcom to complain about something offensive, especially when it’s something they’ve only learned about second-hand via an inflammatory article in a newspaper. So it would undoubtedly be delighted if, having read this, you paid a visit to the Press Complaints Commission website (www.pcc.org.uk) to lodge a complaint about Moir’s article on the basis that it breaches sections 1, 5 and 12 of its code of practice.
So let’s have a look at that code:
1: Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.
iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
Moir opines: “Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one”. But not according to the coroner, who reported that Gateley died of, erm, “natural causes“. Next!
5: Intrusion into grief or shock
i) In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings, such as inquests.
Skipping over the offensive insensitivity of Moir’s gay-bashing a dead man, the problem, ironically, was not that she was restricted on reporting the inquest but that she completely ignored the findings.
12: Discrimination
i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
ii) Details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.
So Gateley’s sexuality is relevant to his death of an undiagnosed heart condition how exactly? We’ll leave it to Moir to explain: ”As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine … under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.” Erm, right.
