Absolutely horrified by this, but I reached out to his team last week as I was so worried about this happening. No matter what everyone thinks about this man and his career, he did not deserve to be hounded and smeared to death. I am already seeing gleeful comments about his death, claiming he was mentally ill, that he caused this himself, that he deserved it, and claiming the immense media storm around this is not responsible for his death.
I will not have been the only person who saw this death coming a mile off - who could possibly have survived this??
A reminder that this man committed no crime - he was hounded to death by media, and millions of people on social media who were criticising him, digging up information about him, speculating, investigating, finding new people to interview and ask about him, laughing and mocking him - and let’s be honest - we don’t even know what is true and what isn’t yet, but it’s too late. Again.
We treat abusers, murderers and rapists with more compassion than this. We need serious conversations about media conduct and the role of endless reports, speculation and op-eds that target one person repeatedly.
Did this man lie about his career? Maybe he did. Maybe he made the entire thing up.
Did he deserve to die? Absolutely not. Not in a million years.
This death is tragic and horrific. I just hope we don’t now find out that much of what was reported and speculated on was filled with lies and targeted harassment of this man, because then we are in extremely deep water. Again.