The Life of Jan Moir

Oh dear Daily Mail. You seem to have outdone yourself this time, with Jan Moir’s article on Steven Gately, suggesting he died of not-so-natural-causes.

In case you haven’t had the chance to see the article entitled: “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death” (sub-headed with “Troubling death: Healthy 33-year-old men like Stephen Gately don’t just fall asleep and die”).

UPDATE: Jan Moir says “In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.”

Well, Jan, us mischievous internet campaigners look at these sentences and read them as homophobic and bigoted:

“Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages.”

Original article from [DailyMail] (though rather doctored now – the article was called “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Now its been renamed “A strange lonely and troubling death…”

But if you don’t want to click through to the Mail’s site, you can read it in a [GoogleDoc]

Unsurprisingly Jan Moir breeches articles 1, 5 and 12 of the code of practice and the Press Complaints Commission website is currently down. Media backlash is taking form in articles from bloggers, tweets from Stephen Fry and a column from Charlie Brooker (brought forward from Monday). You can read some funny bits about it here:

Jan Moir’s career to die of perfectly natural causes: [Newsarse]
Why there is nothing ‘natural’ about the life of Jan Moir [TheEnemiesofReason]
There is nothing ‘natural’ about Jan Moir’s weird face [NotSoWunderbar]

Tags: charlie brooker, daily mail, googledoc, jan moir, stephen fry, steven gately
Posted in News |