When a celebrity does something or something happens to them, it is news due to their high profile.
If someone is famous, their work and public persona becomes part of people’s lives, making things that happen to them feel personally significant to many.
In the case of musicians in particular, people link moments in their own lives with their music, so the connections run deep.
Parasocial relationships are when people feel deeply connected to celebrities because they are in the media. People feel that they know them.
Parasocial grief is where a person expends emotional energy – intense grief for example – on someone they don’t know personally. It’s a complicated thing, but one seen very vividly after the death of Princess Diana when thousands took to the streets, wailing and crying for a woman they had never met, but knew only through the media.
When One Direction’s Liam Payne died last week, fans naturally felt a deep sense of loss because they’ve felt an even deeper connection with his music and public image over the years.
Liam died after falling from a hotel balcony while on holiday in Buenos Aires in Argentina. The 31-year-old father-of-one had risen to fame as a member of one of the best-selling boy bands of all time.
For this reason his tragic death was always going to be on the news agenda. Millions of people worldwide were impacted and therefore it is in the public interest to cover it.
Most of the media covered the tragedy with care and compassion, as they are taught to do. Most journalists, despite covering many, many tragedies weekly, treat people as they would want their own loved ones to be treated.
Some, however, forgot themselves and forgot that behind every news story there are broken human beings and devastated family and friends.
American entertainment news site TMZ, in a staggering display devoid of compassion and empathy, posted photographs of Liam’s body as he lay beneath his balcony window.
The site used a photograph of his heavily-tattooed torso and arm, a move that very rightly caused outrage worldwide.
The website’s executive producer, Michael Babcock, then defended the decision to use the images, claiming they were trying to confirm reports Liam had died before police had established his identity.
“When the information was coming in, police had not yet confirmed that it was Liam, so what was done on the TMZ website, there was an image – did not show the full image, didn’t show his face – but that showed his arm and his abdomen, where he has some very recognisable tattoos, so that’s sort of used as a way to confirm, or to match up the tattoos at a point where police had not yet confirmed his identity. And then, once they did, obviously, that photo was removed.”
This despicable move, which no doubt garnered millions of hits on their website, means that Liam’s young son will be able to see his father’s dead body online forever. That his mother got to see her son’s body – and that someone had taken a photograph of him as he lay dying – as she sat 7,000 miles away, helpless.
It was no wonder that the mother of Liam’s child, Cheryl Cole, spoke out, slamming the ‘abhorrent reports and media exploitation’ of her former partner’s tragic death.
Just because someone has risen in fame does not mean that they can be stripped of dignity in death – that somehow people own them, can say what they like.
While most journalists covered the incident with care, some media reports have been nothing short of disgraceful.
In the era of 24-hour news and the pressures that come along with it in newsrooms, some of our media need to learn to do better, more trauma-informed work, that will do no harm to the public and the reputation of the industry that they are a part of.
There’s an insatiable desire from the public for information when something happens. They want to know the exact details, they want to know every detail, and in the midst of the rush to feed the beast, ethics and compassion can sometimes be swept to the side.
There’s a certain degree of auto-pilot for journalists covering tragedies. A lot of journalists cover a lot of tragedies and put up an emotional barrier to protect themselves. The problem is that while the barrier stops awfulness coming in, it can also stop compassion getting out.
It’s a problem as old as time for newsrooms worldwide, now more than ever, and something the media must address if it is to survive.
Just because someone has risen in fame does not mean that they can be stripped of dignity in death