I’m trying to develop more of an open mind about Britain’s newspapers but sometimes learning to love the Daily Mail is really hard work.
The press complaints commissions website has just gone down due to the sheer number of complaints it is currently receiving about Jan Moir’s article today: Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death.
On a personal note, my 9-year-old self, who had a slightly obsessive crush on this particular Boyzone member (and with those dashing curtains who didn’t?) is outraged. What angers the grown up in me more is the ridiculous levels of conjecture and cruel speculation that makes up the meat of the article.
Moir makes completely nonsensical links and jumps between Gately’s sexuality and the nature of his death.
Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.
And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.
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.
What’s worse, for some completely unexplained reason, Moir goes on suggests that Gately’s tragic death would serve as a blow to the ‘happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.’ Moir continued:
Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.
Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened.
Just for good measure she finishes with straight down-the-line homophobic statement that has nothing to do with the situation or Stephen Gately.
On Tuesday Twitterers were indespensible in the promotion of the Guardian’s right to report on Paul Farrelly’s parliamentary question about the oil traders Trafigura. Within hours these tweets essentially made the Carter-Ruck ‘super’ injunction null and void.
Today the tide turned, these same people made it clear that Moir’s irrelevant comments were, in contrast, absolutely not in the public interest and just as they had with Carter-Ruck and Trafigura a couple of days previously, the twitosphere held The Mail to account in real time.
Charlie Brooker has already tweeted he will be posting a piece on the controversy on The Guardian this afternoon while Steven Fry and Derren Brown have been encouraging their many thousands of followers to lodge their official complaints. It’s been an interesting week for social media.
After online publication the story received dozens of negative, angry comments The Mail is obviously getting a little worried about the furore their thoughtless commentator has caused. You can see their (failed) attempt at changing the provocative headline here. They have sorted it now.
Rag Doll 
