Some of the coverage of L'Wren Scott's death was shameful but it doesn't justify curbs on the pressIdeally, the British press would have behaved a lot better last week, when it reported the premature death of the fashion designer L'Wren Scott. Who was also the girlfriend of Mick Jagger. Critics of the coverage are correct: it was not only brutal, but a breach of the press's own guidelines for red tops to plaster photos of Jagger's stricken face all over front pages, sexist to suggest that the relationship with Jagger was the most significant achievement of Scott's life, and shameful to speculate, the day after her suicide, about possible motivation – her debts, a separation, Jagger's alleged form in causing female despair?It is not, presumably, that such commentary is too disreputable to publish, ever. The speculation about Ted Hughes, during his lifetime, by academics, as well as fans, who held him responsible for Sylvia Plath's (and Assia Wevill's) suicide, went much further in offensiveness than last week's media insinuations about Scott's business and Jagger's either flagging or utterly unshakeable commitment. "The temptation to do little but recreate Plath's biography through her work – and, implicitly, to try to unearth the complex reasons for her tragic suicide – overtakes the most focused reader," wrote her biographer, Linda Wagner-Martin. And when you think that Virginia Woolf's suicide was derided after her inquest in 1941, in newspapers misrepresenting her act... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-23 00:00:00 UTC ]