The Sun's front page 'report' - PICTURE - of Reeva. Just me that finds it sickening?

[StoicButStressed]

Whilst due process still underway, will self-edit to the simple facts known here. This was a young woman, a law graduate, a part-time model, and she has been shot and murdered and her boyfriend charged with Murder. As write, she is on a slab in a mortuary; as she was yesterday morning when The Sun chose to run the story with full front page picture of the murdered young woman. There are a gazillion images of her available. But The Sun clearly thought that lifting one of her modelling (suspect from an FHM shoot she had done given the nature of the pic) in a slightly sultry, pretty 'sexy' shot, really was the 'appropriate' one for them to 'use' plastering their front page - 'use' being operative word, anything for a few more sales eh Rupert?

So she is dead, and The Sun takes the opportunity to wallop a full length bikini shot of a beautiful young woman on it's front page with the fact she has just been slaughtered; her family is bereft; and pretty much all else as a mere aside. Nauseating - or is it just me?

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4796129/oscar-pistorius-charged-with-murdering-girlfriend.html

[AKissIsNotAContract]

There's a thread about it here

By putting the link in your post you are helping to make the Sun money.

[StoicButStressed]

Hi AKiss - thanks for that, I hadn't seen it although had used search first().

Take your point re the link, but stand by the fact I personally think it is worth far more that people actually SEE how frickin vile and disrespectful (& a whole heap of other adjectives too) The Sun has been, vs. your equally valid point. Bottom line is that even if they do make £0.0001p per view, I think the greater good is served by everyone SEEING it - as simply 'knowing of it' really does not bring home quite how repulsive it is; and I'd rather people DID see it and then act on that, than them NOT see it and not be horrified by it. Also (in macro sense), don't think News International will in any way financially benefit in a meaningful way to their (vast) balance sheet from people seeing it, certainly not vs. the the way they may lose if this turns out to be a tipping point for them (e.g. in the other current broader issues people are turning the heat up on them for, like bloody 'Page 3' for example).

[ChickensHaveNoEyebrows]

It's not just you.

[scaevola]

Thread from yesterday.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1684747-To-think-the-Sun-has-reached-an-all-time-low-with-its-front-page-today

[lougle]

" Whilst due process still underway, will self-edit to the simple facts known here. This was a young woman, a law graduate, a part-time model, and she has been shot and murdered and her boyfriend charged with Murder."

Except you haven't self-edited to the simple facts known here. You've given an opinion on the legal status of her death and by extension, implied an opinion as to the guilt of the boyfriend, given that there had been no denial of his involvement in her death.

[StoicButStressed]

Lougle - the charge of murder has been made within SA Court of Law, and that charge made to a named individual. That's not my 'opinion', it's a - horrendous but true - fact.

The 'self-edit' bit was refraining from including in the post other aspects of case which have been confirmed by police and from leaked witness statements. It was those that it didn't seem appropriate to include, even though they are widely in the public domain. But the charge and the accused are facts - no matter how much I wish they weren't.

[lougle]

A charge does not make it 'fact'. It is only Murder if the suspect is found guilty. As you don't have a time machine, you can't possibly say that she has been murdered,yet.

[StoicButStressed]

Lougie My post was about THE SUN's front page, to the extent that I simply wrote the facts as reported & did not even use the name of the individual charged - precisely as the issue I was raising was not of comment on it, or speculation, or idle tittle-tattle, or anything that could or would de-rail from the very specific point about how one of our National Newspapers saw fit to 'report' on it. Namely, by using full front page cover for a shot manifestly taken in another context, and without even dignifying the deceased by using her name?

And you are of course right, I do NOT have a 'time machine'

[lougle]

The minute you claimed to be sticking to simple facts, yet stated that the death was 'murder', you undermined any point you were making. That's the sort of thing that gets publishers in trouble.

The Sun is a tabloid red-top. That they use sensationalist headlines and provocative images is hardly revelation of the century.

Given that the circulation of the Sun last month was 2.4 million, vs. 204,000 for The Guardian, it seems to be working for them.

Newspapers are commercial businesses. If people didn't buy them, they'd change what they were selling.