What’s the story?
MEMBERS outside Scotland have missed the pleasure of watching the humiliation of the Scottish Sunday Express over a splash headlined ANNIVERSARY SHAME OF DUNBLANE SURVIVORS. It began:
“Dunblane survivors have ‘shamed’ the memory of their dead peers with foul-mouthed boasts about sex, brawls and drink-fuelled antics as they reach adulthood. A number of the youngsters, now 18, have posted shocking blogs and photographs of themselves on the Internet, 13 years after being sheltered from public view in the aftermath of the atrocity.”
Sadly the story is no longer on the paper’s website, after it was forced into an abject apology.
This followed the gleeful discovery on Facebook of a number of photos of a woman engaging in “drink-fuelled antics”, including handing a glass of wine to a baby. The woman was Paula Murray, the writer of the article.
As fair cop, then, but it wasn’t really the point. By what booze-fuddled news criteria was the fact that 18-year-olds get up to such things a “story”?