Lucy Meadows: Coroner tells press 'Shame on you'

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Well said, that coroner

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/28/lucy-meadows-coroner-press-shame

The Coroner singled out the character assassination Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail had carried out on Meadows, which he said "sought to humiliate and ridicule" her.

(shameless bump!)

Can charges be brought? I assume not because Lucy is dead.

I still fail to see how humiliating a non-celeb, non politician, non person in the public eye, was in any way 'journalism'.

Don't know about charges, but he said he'll be writing to urge the Government to implement the recommendations of the Leveson report.

Its pitiful that so-called journalists can just seemingly pick a life at random and attack it for the hell of it. No wonder journos have such a bad reputation.

Indeed. To quote the Coroner again

"Lucy Meadows was not somebody who had thrust herself into the public limelight. She was not a celebrity. She had done nothing wrong,"...
..."Her only crime was to be different. Not by choice but by some trick of nature. And yet the press saw fit to treat her in the way that they did."

There was no need for any of it :( whole story is incredibly sad .

Terrible, I hope Richard littlejohn has this weighing on his conscience. Sadly I doubt he cares.

Why should he care, Viva? Living as he does in his gated community in Florida from whence he spews his bile about Broken Britain.

A quarter of a million people asking for him to be sacked did nothing. He has no conscience.

Does he really live in Florida?

Well, I've read in several places that he does Viva

Here's Johan Hari on the subject:

"Littlejohn's Britain doesn't exist. Literally. He spends much of the year writing from a gated mansion in Florida, and admitted in a recent column that, when he is in Britain, he rarely leaves the house. He is describing a country he sees only through the pages of the right-wing press and his self-reinforcing mailbag."

I don't know why I'm amazed.

I know. Makes him even more repellent, if that were possible.

I wouldn't take anything Johann Hari says as gospel, if I were you.

Not that I'm a fan of Littlejohn - his spiteful attack on the poor woman was entirely wrong. But Hari's word is not to be relied upon.

I think the coroner is misguided, however. It seems from the evidence reported that the poor woman's suicide notes talked about debts, several bereavements and the stress of her job. She didn't blame the press intrusion. It may have been wrong, but it is equally wrong to ignore what she actually said about her motivation.

Or maybe she just didn't want to subject the hate she felt onto somebody else even though that somebody else played a huge part in how bad she felt about herself.

Who knows. It can't possibly have not had an impact on her,

I'm glad the coroner made those comments. I see a lot of high-profile journalists like to pretend that Hacked Off are just a bunch of pampered celebs who want to stop the press from writing the truth about them. We need to remember that ordinary people's lives are damaged by press intrusion.

Whether she cited the press as a cause or not, who amongst us would be able to put up with that sort of pressure? She had committed no crime, was no danger to the kids she taught, wasn't the first (or last) man to have a sex change... why was she noteworthy enough to write a piece on? Its as if she was 'named and shamed' in the press.

I always thought that such things had to be proven to be 'in the public interest' (and 'interest' as in something that affects us, and not in a 'oooo, fancy that' kind of way).

YY of course the press coverage is horrible and Littlejohn in particular was entirely unjustified. But the coroner is going way beyond the facts. We have to give her the right to speak about her own actions, not leap to conclusions that fit our own prejudices.

I wonder how it got into the nationals - was it one of the parents who passed on the letter from the school?

Maybe it was on the school website. If someone has passed the letter beyond the school community, I hope they are hanging their head in shame.

Got to love that coroner. I wonder how thr verdict will be reported in the mail.

Moomin the in the public interest rule can easily be interpreted to fit pretty much anything you want to print. Columnists get extra leeway as well, since they are writing opinion. Free speech etc. Remember Jan Moir on Stephen Gately?

It's horrible. I doubt the Fail will even acknowledge their part in it.

I know. The old man's was a journalist and he actually did some real campaigning that did good (which I am very proud of him for). None of this gutter arse-wipe stuff.

I agree with all the posts above, but can't help but think that it would have been far wiser for Lucy to start afresh at a new school in her new gender. I think it would be very confusing for children too, given that this was a primary school. All very sad.

Children are far more adaptable and accepting than Richard Littlejohn and you Nana are giving them credit for.

I would have thought it would be easier to go back to where you knew the kids, parents, colleagues, than to go somewhere new and have to either 'hide' the fact (and live in fear of someone finding out) or bite the bullet and take a deep breath and go through the door...