Just like your dad, you’ll never learn

 

 

 As hinted at a few entries ago, here’s my most recent piece of work. It’s my first entry in a collaboration project with my friend Rhian called the Turbulence Closet. This entry is all about me getting extremely pissed off at the actions of the Sunday Express journalist Paula Murray who wrote a pretty disgusting story involving the Survivors of the Dunblane Massacre a few months ago. I’m sure most of you are more than aware of what happened on that day back in March, but for some of my international readers I’ll give you a brief rundown.

On the morning of March 13th a man called Thomas Hamilton walked into the local primary school in Dunblane here in Scotland and opened fire during a gym class. He killed 17 people; the teacher over seeing the class and 16 children, all aged between 5 and 6 years old, after which he killed himself. I can’t really put the sheer, visceral brutality of that event into words. I was 11 when it happened and I remember it well. It was the first huge news story that I remember sticking in my mind, an event that I was old enough to understand the implications off. It cut deep to the bone through out Scotland because we’ve always had this attitude that the bad things don’t really happen here, especially in a sleepy little town like Dunblane. Murderers and Terrorist are only interested in the big Cities down south. That fairytale was shattered on that morning though.

Ever since then, there has been a strict policy on not naming the survivors of the massacre in the media. There was the feeling that we shouldn’t let that even shape their lives. As toddlers, they still had everything ahead of them. If they achieved success in life, they would do it on their own terms and not through some idealised notion of ‘fighting through the pain’ of that horrible day. Conversely, if they happened to go off the rails, like countless of us have growing up, they would escape the public scrutiny and accusations that would inevitably follow.

But Paula Murray took that anonymity away. She not only named several of the survivors, but she out right accused them of ’shaming the memory’ of those died. Now, what horrible things must they have done to deserve that? Well, our dear Paula befriended a ‘Dunblane group’ on the social networking site Bebo (incidentally biding her time until those involved turned 18….classy move that) Through this group the members posted pictures of themselves on nights out, having fun, getting drunk and generally doing what teenagers do. And so there we have it. The grossly offensive act these individuals performed to shame the memory of their murdered classmates was basically living…….a normal life.The fact Murray would plumb such depths for a story and to twist it in such a way really sickened me and a lot of other people too. There was a big outcry through various blogs on the web and a distinct line between new and old media seems to be emerging. The Express realised an extremely weak and bullish ‘apology’ that far from addressed the ill feeling.

We should always be wary and sceptical towards what the media feeds us. In the past they’ve had a reckless attitude towards their public, the abhorrent actions of Kelvin MacKenzie and The Sun in the aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster come to mind. But my views on old media vs. web 2.0 are for another day. I hope you like my first entry and if you feel strongly about it, do some research on the incident yourself and take action.