Veteran Fairfax journalist Rohan Connolly has slammed the Daily Mail for their decision to camp outside the mental health facility where the former Essendon coach James Hird is being treated, following an alleged 'overdose'.
Last week, Hird's wife Tania issued a statement asking for the family's privacy to be respected.
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In 35 years in journalism, I’ve seen some pretty ordinary behaviour and some pretty shocking breaches of ethics, but few as appalling as what I read in the Daily Mail on Wednesday.
When James Hird’s apparent intentional overdose was first reported last week, we saw some unsavoury sights, namely TV crews camped out on the doorstep of the Hird family home.
Some of us thought, though, naively as it turned out, that once the facts were established and once Hird’s wife Tania had publicly asked that they be given some privacy to allow him to recover, that might actually be the end of it.
Sadly, we were wrong. On Wednesday, the Daily Mail, a proudly downmarket British rag that has spread its tentacles to this country, and makes a nasty habit of ripping off other media outlets’ work without attribution, sunk lower still.
It had staked out the mental health clinic where James Hird is staying in order simply to snap some photographs of Tania delivering him his mail. Not only did it impinge once again on the privacy of a man clearly in his darkest hours, it blithely showed enough identifying features in the background for anyone to be able to easily establish exactly where Hird was convalescing.
Whatever you think of Hird’s culpability in the Essendon scandal, surely even those most scathing would concede that was completely out of line.
And what did the Daily Mail get from its stakeout? Some photos of Tania walking to and from her car along with the breathless revelation that she was “wearing an elegant black dress and simple wedge shoes, her phone in one hand as she clutched at the mail in her other hand”.
That was before repeating, almost tauntingly, the pleas for space and privacy Hird’s wife had made last week. It was a disgrace, and I think a new low for journalism in this country.
But what do we do about it? Well, I don’t support the sort of vigilante activites some were suggesting on social media.
You can, however, if you feel strongly enough, resist any temptation to read this obvious sort of clickbait, or the Daily Mail full stop. You can make a point of not purchasing the wares of companies who advertise with them.
And you can email, not the poor junior saps sent out these sort of odious tasks, but the editors and managers who make them do it knowing full well that they risk damaging further the mental health of people clearly unwell, and quite possibly pushing them over the edge.
As part of the media, incidents like these leave me deeply ashamed of my own profession. And it’s little wonder we all end up getting tarred with the same brush.
There’s still far too many media who talk the talk about serious issues like mental health, but refuse to walk the walk when it comes time to draw the line between doing a job, and simply showing the sort of compassion for those suffering any decent human being would.
Throwing a line in at the end of a story with contact numbers for Lifeline and Beyond Blue is a gesture. But if it’s not supported by practical action, in this case simply backing off and allowing someone seriously ill to get better, it’s nothing more than rank hypocrisy.
And as for the Daily Mail? Well, frankly, I wouldn’t wipe my bum with it.