The Daily Mail's Grief Porn

The Daily Mail’s fight to rid the world of women in trousers has been covered extensively elsewhere but on a recent trip to their website to peruse their Judging Women™ sidebar for tips on being more true to my gender (note to self: become shorter, blonder, thinner, wear less, have babies), the Mail appeared to have surpassed itself in thigh-rubbing voyeurism.

The Mail chose to cover the repatriation of the bodies of three soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, not by describing their upbringings, but by focusing their attentions on one of the widows and in particular, her dress. What should have been a sombre affair was, for the Mail, just another opportunity to up its daily quota of lecherous photos. Seemingly there’s nothing the Mail can’t illustrate with attractive young women in dresses. In the first piece that had mentioned the deaths of three soldiers in Afghanistan, Heidi Kirkpatrick’s pink dress was described as “vibrant” twice. Her dead husband’s picture was included once. Five almost identical full length photos of the widow were incorporated into the piece, with Heidi Kirkpatrick crying in every one. Apparently the Mail can’t accept that their readers will appreciate the full tragedy of an event without the visual aid of pretty people crying.

This is insulting, both to servicemen and their families. Whether or not you agree with Britain’s continuing involvement in the Afghanistan conflict, stories on military casualties should be just that: stories, of human interest, rather than vehicles for shoehorning blondes in “vibrant” dresses into your already facile, sexist rag.  Here’s a primer for how to cover military deaths for the Mail:

1. Focus on the individual: their childhood, background, history in the army – all of these are more important than covering the colour of one mourner’s frock.

2. Make the headline about the casualties: that three of the first words in your headline concern a widow’s sartorial choices for a funeral is deplorable.

3. Cover the event: photographs showing the volume of mourners who have turned out is a) more sensitive and b) has more journalistic worth in news reportage.

4. If you have to include photographs, don’t make the majority of them of one person, in the same place: the story here seems more concerned with a widow’s dress. Why not include childhood photos of the deceased? Pictures from important moments of their life? Graduation, a wedding, the deceased with their parents?

5. Consider the impact of your reporting on those you cover. I can’t imagine the family of Jamie Kirkpatrick, including his widow, are thrilled that during one of the most traumatic days of their lives, you have interviewed them, under the guise of writing a genuine tribute to someone they loved, and then turned their loss into something more akin to a fashion spread. Papping celebrities is one thing: doing so to a woman in floods of tears is another.

Particularly galling is the fact that only last week, the Daily Mail berated the BBC for being voyeuristic in its coverage of Wimbledon (farcically, next to a column of papped shots of celebrities) ranting that televised scenes of spectators kissing are a “gross invasion of privacy”. It’s a shame that more of the Mail’s moral rage isn’t directed at their own coverage of grievers in Wootton Bassett.

Edit: Anton Vowl’s also covered this on the excellent Enemies of Reason