That you can't libel the dead under English law means an apology is simply the cost of doing business for tabloid editors
It is an interesting quirk of the English legal system that you can't libel the dead. Very handy if you're a tabloid news editor, at say, the Sun, and you publish an article about 23-year-old Julian Brooker from Brighton becoming a "human fireball" after touching a railway line while crawling around pretending to be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The shop assistant was drunk, the red top behemoth informed its readers in 2005, because it was 23 October and Julian was obsessed with the number 23. A great tabloid exclusive. Were an iota of it true, that is.
In the last 24 hours the Sun's subsequent apology to the late Julian ("His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn't go drinking on that date every month. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian's family and friends") has resurfaced across the Twittersphere to howls of derision. Some unacquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Britain's newspaper industry have questioned whether the whole thing is in fact a hoax. Sadly, it's not. Far from being an exception, such cases stray dangerously close to being a rule.
I make that claim with authority because during the two years I worked at the Daily Star I wrote similar, arguably worse, yarns. When Boyzone star Stephen Gately died in October 2009, I was dispatched to Mallorca to investigate. Beneath my byline in the days that followed were lurid revelations of heavy drinking, drugs he may have taken, and gay orgies he may have been part of.
We tabloid reporters knew little, but under pressure to deliver much, the hotel bar soon swirled with speculation. Thoughts morphed into theories, theories shifted into fact. After all, you can't libel the dead.
The same month Kevin McGee, former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, committed suicide. At the Daily Star I picked up the phone to a reader who claimed he knew the couple and the story behind the tragedy. "How much is that worth?" He asked. I told him we needed to meet first. He replied that he was out of town.
"Sod it, you can't libel the dead," someone proffered. That afternoon I wrote the story: "LUCAS EX BLEW �2 MILLION ON DRUGS AND BOOZE." The tabloid news cycle, unrelenting, waits for no man. It also doesn't like whistleblowers, as I found out after I wrote a public resignation letter earlier this month.
Tabloid editors often argue that the Press Complaints Commission is there to put things right when they get them wrong (except at Express Newspapers, where they have withdrawn their subscription to the PCC). This is a disingenuous argument. They know the horse has bolted, and strapped to its back is a big bag of cash from readers who thought they were paying for thrusting journalism, for the inside scoop.
Privately, they know human tragedy is a raw material ready to be forged into facile tabloid narratives, while an apology is just a cost of doing business, a gesture to keep the news wheel greased.
But the association of Gollum will always taint Julian Brooker's memory, and the cliche of a drugs- and booze-fuelled suicide always devalue that of Kevin McGee. Tabloids may not be able to libel the dead, but they can certainly start having more respect for them.
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