Gotcha!

The image is pretty small so this is what the subtitle says:

"Sharon Wood stares from the window of the Corfu chalet where her two little children died... her face unable to hide the unbearable pain."

It's a shame that the Daily Mirrors online front page differs from their printed one as todays lead story was a masterpiece of writing. Alas, though, the online front page changes by the hour and I can't find the specific piece so you'll have to trust me on this one.

Anyway, two things occured to me when I caught this front page in the newsagents earlier. The first is how much the writing of the subtitle, and indeed the whole story if I could prove it, resembles a Hello! magazine spread. Take the subtitle and just change a few words and you'll find it to be the exact same language as they use to announce another inane celebrity event:

"Brad and Angelina pose in Nambia as they await the birth of their baby."

It's the party line, it's the official statement. It doesn't offer you any other way to interpret the picture, it leads nothing to chance. The language is so clear and understandable that the usual questions or ambiguity that headlines use to lure you in have been completely removed.

Obviously there is a big difference between the two news stories, and clearly there is no other way to report the Sharon Wood story as anything other than the horrific tragedy that it is, but this subtitle really concerned me. It was a celebrity cover...

Which brings me to the second thing that occured to me about this front page; it's a paparazzi shot. This wasn't taken by a fleet of photographers as they entered the chalet, nor was it posed for by Ms Wood - it was taken with a telephoto lens. That's very dark... a grief-filled mother has become an appropriate target for the stalkaratzi.

Of course the story is sympathetic to Ms Wood - it couldn't be anything else - but that doesn't justify intruding on her personal grief. This isn't a celebrity tit-slip, or a politician fallen from grace, or a massive public tragedy... this is a woman who's just lost both her children and she should be allowed to visit the place where they died without a commission-hungry hack hiding outside a window trying to get snaps of her.