A death happened. The victim died instantly after being struck by a tube train. Someone else is charged with allegedly murdering the victim. A tragic event, one for the investigation team to try to piece together the events leading up and a subsequent jury or jury's to decide if there is culpability based on the facts presented to them.
The victim was transgender. This made all the difference to how it was reported in several outlets and what this post will focus on along with disgraceful online muckraking and tedious labelling.
In newspaper land Sonia was not a talented solicitor instrumental in the formation of several legal precedents and helping many people but just a transvestite or a "man in dress" with wilful insertions of the male pronoun the reporting was horribly sensationalised by several outlets including the Daily Mail, Evening Standard and The Sun. To compound it journalists started sifting through her online life, destroying her memory and suddenly the transvestite became a "a transsexual escort" who was living "a secret life".
Even in reporting the touching tribute from her family which showed true love and acceptance by calling her Sonia not David they had to ruin it.
Good grief, not again!!! These media people JUST DON'T GET IT, do they!!! I feel so bad for her family, who have to deal with this crap while they're also trying to cope with the untimely death of a loved one! Have those people no dignity or shame?!?
ReplyDeleteDani xxx
I guess this sums up why no-one in Jones Towers reads a newspaper. They seem packed with opinion rather than news.... and dated opinions that don't belong in these times.
ReplyDeleteAs you - and Dani - put, what about the family? :-(
What happened was sad and the form is way too close to home for my own comfort but the character assassination in death is just so...sickening.
ReplyDeleteIt leaves me numb to be honest.
Sonia's many achievements not least for others in the legal field seem to count for little in the attempt to portray this incident as a having a sordid back ally background even when to best of our knowledge it doesn't.
There is also a wake up call for anyone using publicly visible media
that anything about your 'other life' will be hunted down in death.
Sorry for being so emotional, Regards Caroline.
Can't add much more to the comments, there was a great obituary in The Guardian which summed up a great life.
ReplyDeleteIt does make one think how even innocent online identities can be spun into something totally different.