What baffles me about this whole situation is that now Caroline Flack is now being painted by the media as some sort of lovely, kind, wonderful person.
She was awaiting trial for domestic violence. The same people who were slating her are now extoling her virtues. Hypocrites.
I never knew her, and I have no idea if she was guilty or not, and in this country people are innocent until proven guilty, so I'm not going to even discuss the offence or trial itself, but the media can't have it both ways: if she'd been found guilty of domestic violence, then she'd have become a pariah, and rightly so. If she'd have been exonerated, she'd have no doubt still been suspected and spoken about in 'murmurs' under the media's "no smoke without fire" policy. I'm sure that knowledge of how the media treat people even after being exonerated was probably on her mind.
Like I said, I don't know what really happened and I doubt anyone except her and her partner at the time ever will know, but the media has a lot to answer for either way. It's all well and good talking about tragedies and how sad it is, but it's the same media that doubtless contributed to her taking her life without having any definitive knowledge of what did or didn't happen.
What I will say is that domestic violence is never ok, and if this had happened after an actual conviction, I'd have much less sympathy for her (but no less sympathy for her family and friends), but it seems trial by media has trumped 'innocent until proven guilty' again, and a young woman who had not actually been convicted of any wrongdoing has now taken her own life as a result of the media barracking.
Will the media learn anything? Nope. They'll say some platitudes, it'll all blow over, and in no time, they'll find another victim.
It's about time that press were brought to account. I have no issue with a free press, and press power has actually done a lot of good over the years as well, but with power comes responsibility, and in circumstances like these someone should be answerable. Criticism is fine, so long as it's founded in fact. In Caroline Flack's case, since the trial hadn't taken place, no proven facts were available... journalists are not above the law and if one word of untruth was printed or spoken in the media, then prosecutions should follow. A lot is made of 'social media bullying', but surely it should be just 'media bullying'; just because someone is a professional journalist (I use the term loosely about a lot of them) shouldn't mean they get carte blanche to victimise someone who hasn't been proven to have done anything wrong.
They would no doubt bleat about press censorship and freedom, but is that really worth a person's life? A person is innocent until proven guilty, and the law should protect people accused of crimes... If they're convicted, name and shame is fine. I'd even encourage it... but shaming innocent people to the point they commit suicide based only on accusation way oversteps what can legitimately be called press freedom imho.