Who’s to blame for the death of Caroline Flack?
04 Wednesday Mar 2020
Written by Charles Harris in Crime, Journalism
Who’s to blame for the death of Caroline Flack?
If you believe the tabloids, it’s the police or the Crime Prosecution Service (CPS). If you believe the CPS, it’s the media.
And if you believe the serious newspapers, it’s us. Yes, you and me. (More about our role in this later).
Caroline Flack (9 November 1979 – 15 February 2020)
First, for those outside the UK, who’s Caroline Flack?
The bare facts are that she is, or now sadly was, a British television and radio presenter, in particular in reality TV.
She won Strictly Come Dancing in 2014 and more recently co-presented the reality TV show Love Island. She left Love Island in December 2019 after her arrest for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend, tennis player Lewis Burton.
Then on 15 February 2020, with the court case looming, she appears to have committed suicide. (As I write this, the inquest has not yet taken place).
The blame game
Of course, everybody weighed in with their opinions of why. Certainly, a key factor seems to have been the pressure of the case, due to start on March 4th.
Her management and boyfriend pointed out that the CPS pressed ahead, despite Burton refusing to testify against her. They called it a “show trial”. She was on bail on condition she didn’t see him and had already threatened to kill herself, it seems.
So far, so clear-cut. Certainly as far as the tabloids are concerned. It’s all the fault of the CPS for not dropping a case against a woman who was clearly vulnerable.
No matter that – vulnerable or not – they happily trashed Flack’s reputation from the moment the alleged assault took place.
Headlines such as “Caroline ‘Whack’ and photos of a blood-stained bed were just the beginning. Remember, these are the same people who justify invading private lives by saying “privacy is for paedos,” as a News of the World journo told a government inquiry.
Intelligent thugs?
Unlike the newspapers, the CPS proposed a trial in which Flack would have had a chance to defend herself. One in which she was innocent unless proved guilty…
…While the tabloids subjected her to a trial by media, in which she was guilty until proved innocent. They effectively hounded her – and nobody (innocent or guilty) should have to face that.
Now, of course, they cry foul and accuse the judicial process of driving her to suicide. But I wonder what they’d have said if a man had been let off a charge of attacking his girlfriend on the basis of emotional vulnerability. (And bear in mind that suicide is the biggest killer of young men in this country).
It was my horror at such journalism that inspired me to write my political satire The Breaking of Liam Glass.
It would be almost reassuring to believe that these writers are somehow thuggish and different from us. However, when I met them, I found them to be mostly highly intelligent, well-educated, apparently decent human beings.
How, I wanted to explore in my book, did seemingly intelligent people get to write such stuff? And how did they live with themselves? And to do it through a strong story and dark humour.
The over-inclusive we
Meanwhile, it strikes me that the CPS are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. While the journalists set themselves up as judge and jury.
Which brings me, as promised, to our role in the proceedings. Because it’s often said that “we” are to blame for reading these stories. If “we” didn’t buy the newspapers, they wouldn’t print them.
As Richard Seymour says at the end of a recent Guardian article, “We also need to take seriously our pleasure in, and fascination with, personal destruction.”
But do “we” all take such pleasure? Or is this an insidious example of what I call the “over-inclusive we”. I rather resent being included in that “we” – and I suspect many others would as well.
I, personally, didn’t ask for the tabloids to savage Caroline Flack. I didn’t read the articles and therefore took no pleasure in them.
And maybe the next time journalists sanctimoniously try to include “us” in their inner circle of Hell, maybe “we” should answer “Not in our name.”
Read more
BBC: Caroline Flack press petition delivered to government
The Guardian: Caroline Flack: scale of negative media coverage before death revealed
4 Comments
Adam Harris said:
March 4, 2020 at 8:04 pm
Interesting post! Just a thought… I think we need to be careful to avoid demonising tabloid readers. ‘We’ humans are all flawed in our psychology, we all make errors of judgement every day (even us Guardian readers). Let he who has never clicked on a slightly salacious article cast the first stone! If we ‘other’ the people who read the Flack articles, then it makes it harder for us to achieve what we really need, which is proper press regulation (with teeth) designed to protect the most vulnerable. And if that’s not something ‘we’ all can buy into, then it will manifest as something that the Guardian reading liberal metropolitan elite are imposing on everyone else, and fail accordingly.
Charles Harris said:
March 5, 2020 at 6:02 pm
Absolutely. People have the right to read what they want, or should do, and the fact that you’ve read something doesn’t mean you approve – or even agreed to it being written in the first place.
Kathryn A Riley said:
July 28, 2020 at 2:49 pm
I have given this considerable thought, since reading this , I have more questions, and no answers.
Firstly, how did the tabloids get access to her house to take photographs? who let them in? If she wasn’t a celebrity, and a member of the general public would they be allowed to do this? Surely it is trespassing? This was the start point of this whole domino effect of devastating tragedy of a young, vibrant, and successful women’s lose of life.
The seed was planted in the mind’s of the general public as soon as the pictures were hot of the press. With gossip and speculation, into the mix a young beautiful celebrity, with high profile jobs in TV.Sorry I don’t buy Richard Seymour in his guardian article, that’s a cop out. I took no pleasure, fascination in this tragedy.
When the police were called to the scene, and discovered it was a ‘high profile’ celebrity’ did they react differently?
According to reports and interviews by the CPS they were following protocol in the situation of an alleged domestic violence abuse. Even though the complaint was withdrawn by her boyfriend. The CPS in a news report said often in these cases the ‘victim’ retracted their statements for fear of repercussions.
In conclusion the journalists, tabloids, and CPS were Judge, and Jury, before it even got to trial. It was never going to be a fair trial, the general public called up for jury service, would already have ‘opinions’. Her career was over before the trial began.
Charles Harris said:
July 28, 2020 at 4:33 pm
Good points. The tabloids always seem to find a way to do what they want to do and all too often steamroller the rest of humanity in the process. Which is a double tragedy, as the tabloids have a valuable part to play in society, when they do things right.