"Heartbreakingly pretty"

[2beesornot2beesthatisthehoney]

Watching ITN news right now. Tragic awful story about the death of a young girl. Teenager helping with enquiries I think. Anyhow the point at which I thought FFS was when a picture was shown of the young girl whose death was described as "all the more tragic" because she was "heartbreakingly pretty". It would be sad whatever , not because of how she looks. It's a terrible story but what a comment by the reporter?
AIBU?

Some of you lot are lacking in compassion, perspective and basic dignity.

This thread beggars belief.

There's a time and a place FFS.

Some of 'us lot' are able to feel compassion and be appalled at what's happened. They are separate things.

And you don't think that the reporter might be affected by the murdered child?

I give in. Wallow in your cesspit.

Fortunately you aren't the thread police itsmine so I won't stfu

How arrogant to tell others what time period should pass before they should discuss the reporting of a murder or anything else for that matter.

Nah, not arrogant. It's empathy - 'how would I feel if my 7 year old child was murdered in an exceptionally violent way and a few hours later some people on the Internet who will thankfully never go through this horror (and will have forgotten by this time next week) are focusing on a twatty comment made by a reporter to express outrage'.

What Dame said. All of it.

Too much piety and too little brain-power here recently.

Evening all,
We have a few reports about this thread and having read through it, believe that it's fair comment on the reporter's work. (Although there but for the grace etc... having been mauled on here for accidentally saying the wrong thing we have some sympathy).
We don't consider that it is a comment on the tragic death of the little girl, and there is another thread in In The News that we would prefer people stuck to if they want to discuss any feelings that the incident has brought up. For those who would prefer to keep their thoughts private, of course there is no requirement to post on either.

I thought the discussion was how the op feels it's inappropriate for anyone to bring into the reporting of a horrific murder that it was "all the more horrific" because the victim was pretty. Not any details of the murder itself. I haven't seen the report and I don't know any details of the murder apart from it was a young girl.
The point of the discussion was why should the fact that any victim is 'pretty' be brought into it?
And I sympathize with the reporter.
It is arrogant to tell people 'you should discuss this in a few weeks not now or you are bad, bad people' - if it offends you then get off this thread - it's hypocritical of you to join in in the first place if you find discussing it in any way offensive.

Thanks HelenMN. You've never deserved a mauling.

Fallon why shouldn't mistakes be pointed out? It matters more when the news is sensitive, doesn't it? Not less?

It's most likely an editor cutting to him unexpectedly that's at least partly to 'blame'.

Thank you helenmumsnet - phew, some sanity!

Yes, I don't see what being pretty has to do with it. It is tragic for any girl to go through that. her and her loved ones. But it seems to be standard reporting when pretty girls or women are harmed to say things like this. I remember words like that being used regarding the Becky Watts case. I also recall an article comparing Maddy McCann to Shannon Matthews in terms of the public reaction along the lines of "Maddie was pretty and blonde, and middle class. Shannon came from a poor council estate and was chubby and not pretty. Had Shannon not been found, would people care as much?" I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. Awful, really.

Mumsnet thank you for your input. If possible I would like to move the thread on to discuss the more generalised problem as illustrated by this Wikipedia article linked in an earlier post.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

What can we do to counteract this ?

I think the comments, if they are to be discussed, are best discussed at the time they are made.

And I think it's shoddy that a reporter fluffs on a story such as this.

The story's been on my local news, that poor bairn and her poor family

I thought it came across as the reported panicked. Reporting a child's death must affect even hardened reporters.

"LunaLoveg00d

It's ITN, the downmarket end of news reporting. Marginally better than Sky, but that's not saying much."

Very true.

We were pretty taken aback by this too....

It was a daft thing to say. I expect when he analyses what he said, the reporter will know he got it wrong.

"I don't think she would've been stopping much traffic this time last week."

Have I just read that? What a horrible horrible thing to say.

Yeah, that came out badly. I just mean that she was a very normal seeming kid, who wouldn't have been of any interest to anyone outside of her family last week.

It's just a bit weird to me when people publicly fawn all over the recently deceased- when they wouldn't have given them a passing thought when they were alive.