The Intrusive Media and Social Media

 Some days ago a woman's body was found in the River Wyre, near the village of St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire and the family of the lady in question asked for their privacy to be respected. It was not.

...The family singled out ITV and Sky News which was the first to interview Ansell, [the partner of the dead lady] for making contact with them directly on Sunday night after police confirmed a body had been found, adding they had asked for privacy.

"They again have taken it upon themselves to run stories about us to sell papers and increase their own profits," the statement said. "It is shameful they have acted in this way. Leave us alone now.

Do the press and other media channels and so-called professionals not know when to stop? These are our lives and our children's lives...

(Robin Vinter, Jamie Grierson, Josh Halliday, The Guardian, 2023)

Beside the mainstream media there was the truly awful explosion of  Social Media intrusion.

... For 23 days, St Michael's on Wyre has been a community under siege. Even as Bulley's body was pulled from the River Wyre on Sunday afternoon, ghoulish day-trippers were seen smiling and taking selfies at the riverside bench where the mystery began on the 27 January. A video of officers recovering her remains was viewed more than 2m times on TikTok...

This is a village of some 600 people. It has a pub, a primary school, a petrol station, a 15th century church, and houses with names such as Chestnut Cottage and The Nook. But over the last three weeks it has been overrun with crime tourists and TikTokers posting macabre updates to their thousands of followers, ambushing local people, filming the area with drones and trampling over gardens...

A Singer with a Donkey
Giuseppe Maria Crespi  (1665-1747)
Photo Credit:  Manchester Art Gallery [CC-BY-NC-ND]

The owner of the local Tate Oil petrol station held her tongue when one day-tripper asked for directions to "Nicola's bench" after driving 80 miles from Carlisle with her children She no longer lets outsiders use the customer toilet after it was "smashed up" last week. Another interloper has been trying to convince locals that Bulley was snatched by aliens.

Many others have shared more sinister theories. The night before Bulley's body was found, nearly 4,000 people joined a live webchat on Twitter dedicated to sharing conspiracy theories about her disappearance. It was hosted by Isabella McFadden, a Californian blogger who has gained thousands of followers by posting unfounded theories about the Madeline McCann case and calling for the child's parents to be reinvestigated. Two days earlier she hosted a chat with more than 10,000 listeners in which people shared unfounded accusations about Bulley's partner, Paul Ansell.

One participant, who said he was a military veteran and lived 2 miles from Bulley, hinted that he had kept watch on the family home to monitor their movements. "I've been there many times and I have equipment that can, you know ... She is in and out of there, and they're in and out of there," he said, careful not to incriminate himself despite his anonymity.

(Josh Halliday, The Guardian, 2023)

So what is it with these people? What drives them? What is their purpose? Why are they so keen to believe and propagate nonsense? Where is thought and reflection? Where is the attention to evidence rather than speculation? Where are their critical thinking abilities?