Caroline Flack - 1980-2020

Bill Wyman.

 

The amount of 'trolling' and death threats she received from teenage girls because she had sex with a member of One Direction likely far far far exceeded what she experienced through her various domestic violence issues.

The media reported all that as a good old laugh though. They didn't want to upset the One Direction fans, they're weirdos who threaten to kill you.

 

I get that many of you believe that.

I fundamentally disagree. Personally I think everyone should have the same right to privacy, when it comes to their private lives. Once it gets out there, then of course we would make our own judgement based on your own standards as to whether it is important or not, taking several matters into consideration. but I don't want neighbours recording through the walls, or reporters poking around in waste paper bins.

So in my view, the vast majority of it shouldn't be out there in the first place and, in any case, splattering someones private lives all over the press and social media comes down to personal judgement by so many people, on so many matters, on too many levels.

First of all, where do you/we draw the line before you think you should know what goes on behind their closed doors. A light entertainment TV presenter or host, a popstar, a TV interviewer who questions the politicians and gives their own opinions, a respected BBC journalist, a CEO, a policeman, a nurse, a teacher, a doctor, a junior civil servant, a senior civil servant, an MP, a minister, a PM? And in the latter few examples, do you want your politicians to have come from a monastery, or do you expect them to have had some experience of real life?

Then, before the "victim" is chosen, should they be medically assessed to see if they can handle such a revelation, and should we care?

Then who should judge whether private info should be released on your behalf? A tabloid reporter or editor, a broadsheet reporter or editor, a TV producer, a blogger, a tweeter?

Then what "private" issues or events behind closed doors should be displayed in public. A missed credit card payment or debt, someone swearing, someone getting drunk, someone getting ill, someone who has had a sex change, a medical ailment, an argument with the missus, a noisy sex session, a minor criminal offence or a major one, a civil offence, or it doesn't need to be an offence at all just anything you personally find offensive.

So I say, treat everyone the same when it comes to this sort of stuff. Because once you start making it a blurry line, then the above questions need to be asked and answered every time, and we would all have different answers.

And in the meantime lives get ruined and lives may be lost just to satisfy the lurid nosiness and peoples thirst for tittle tattle and gossip, and the innate need some have to batter the famous as a way to inflate their own sad lives.

Not for me. Stop it all.

 

Surely criminal offences are, by definition, not private matters?

 

I didn't say they were, I was asking if that should be the threshold between splash or not.

 

Alright, I read the list in that sentence as being the list of things you considered should be private.