November 11, 2009
Politics by other means
My first reaction to the Jacqui Janes story was withering: who is this woman who cares more about The Sun’s silver than her son’s death; who would criticise a half-blind prime minister for bad handwriting and spelling mistakes? I assumed she must be horrible, money-grabbing and cynical.
More fool me. On Newsnight it became clear that things are rather different. Ms Janes is clearly genuinely bereaved and devastated at the loss of her son. And she clearly believes that by publicly shaming Gordon Brown she might be able to make things better for others. But, it has to be said that Ms Janes does not appear to be particularly bright. And she is – by her own admission – on a considerable dose of sedatives. Apparently it was the idea of ‘her friend’ to record Gordon Brown’s phone call.
Which brings us to The Sun. It seems abundantly clear that the ‘newspaper’ not only exploited the death of a young man for blatantly partisan ends, but looks almost certainly to have expolited the extreme grief – and good inentions – of a bereaved mother.
Nothing new there then. And I agree with Sunny at Liberal Conspiracy, and as I’ve written before, Labour should fight back against the Murdoch empire.
But with that said, I can’t deny how hard I was struck by Ms Janes’ moving plea for British troops to be better equipped after describing the horrific injuries her son sustained. It’s a cliche, but it really brought the war home for me, if only for a moment. It made me angry at the Government for underinvestment, and caused me to question what young British men are dying for in the sands of Afghanistan.
So there’s something especially tragic about The Sun’s manipulation. What should be a chance for reflection on the horrors of war, and questioning the justifications for this one, has been turned into a media storm about the Prime Minister’s personal failings, a cynical newspaper, and the political machinations between the two.
War; politics by other means.
Paul said,
November 11, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that the mother’s pain and hurt is v real, and that even though we can happily castiage to the Sun for its exploitation, we should be understanding of her.
Just as a personal experience, when my father was killed in an accident (many years ago, when I was a kid) the thing that seemed to hurt my mum most was a small slip in the coverage of the story in the local paper, which got how many children he left behind wrong, despite having sent a reporter down to interview my mum (I don’t envy anyone that kind of job). She made me go down to the paper offices with a letter of complaint, and though I couldn’t figure out why it was so imporant, I did it of course. She was even more upset when I reported back to her that the editor had said he was too busy to take the letter personally. No apology was ever printed.
It’s only years later, when I studied Kubler-Ross on grief (as part of my nurse training) that my mum’s reaction was absolutely par for the course – what seemed like an absolutely irrational take on an insignificant matter was in fact a part of the transition from shock/denial towards the anger/bargaining aspects of the process, whereby she felt deep down if someone else could be ascribed the blame, somehow things might be better.
Of course, the Sun wouldn’t understand that kind of thing, and by doing what they’ve done they’ve made this poor mother’s grief harder to bear in the long run because they’e given false substance to the phase she has to pass through. Bastards.
Paul Sagar said,
November 11, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Bastards indeed.
franlydie said,
November 12, 2009 at 9:53 am
My friend Mary has a son in the army and he has just gone back to Afghanistan last weekend. She claims the worry is no worse than that of having a son driving a car somewhere, only she’ll get far more support if he dies as a soldier than if he was simply killed by a drunk driver in the UK.