AOB 4: Stephen Gately - Guardian vs Daily Mail

The original article, detailing Stephen Gately’s death, was written by Jan Moir of the Daily Mail.

Moir’s article originally seems sympathetic towards Gately’s death, stating that “The news of Stephen Gately’s death was deeply shocking.” And that Gately had died pointlessly.

As the article continues, however, we soon see that what Moir is writing isn’t, in fact, sympathetic, but just another excuse to have a crack at the gay community, and Stephen’s family, at the expense of the former Boyzone member’s death.

The article, regrettably, was well-written and was made to seem like it made a good point when in fact it didn’t.

Almost on a parallel to Moir’s sympathetic opening, the article carries on to explain Gately’s death, post-mortem and all, rather vaguely.

Though Moir honeys her words, the article is in fact incredibly homophobic in a roundabout way.

She tailors the article to explain Stephen’s death, but does it in a way that suggests something else was to blame other than what actually happened, almost making fluid in the lungs look like murder.

That the public reacted strongly comes as no surprise.

Moir wasn’t careful enough in her wording to avoid people seeing through the honeyed words to the deeply brutal homophobic meaning within.

A large internet campaign on Twitter, led by Stephen Fry and Derren Brown, criticised the article and Moir for writing it.

The fact that Moir had the gall to write it immediately after Stephen’s death, and also accuse Gately’s family of using natural happenstance as a cover-up for something more sinister, shows that Moir has a serious lack of compassion, or even human emotion, towards Gately, and maybe even the gay community in general.

The fact that Moir saw the post-mortem, knew that Gately had died under natural circumstances and yet continued to write the article suggests an infinitely arrogant persona.

Unsurprisingly, the reactions from both the Daily Mail’s audience and the audience of the write-up in the Guardian were very much the same.

Moir’s article received a lot of hateful comments on the first day, posted directly online and on exactly the same page as her article.

People were shocked and appalled at the level of homophobia Moir displayed, and the Daily Mail lost a number of readers because of Moir’s article.

Both the write-up in the Guardian and Charlie Brooker’s article got positive comments regarding their harsh treatment of Moir’s article.

Brooker and the Guardian were entirely fair in their treatment of Moir, after the accusations she made in her article, effectively stating she knew better than forensics and post-mortem evaluations.

Brooker and the Guardian helped bring to light exactly how cruel Moir’s article was, giving rise to a public voice that has spread throughout the media, with several advertising companies withdrawing from the Mail completely, and yet more demanding that their advertisements be moved so as not to be slandered by Moir’s article.