In any story there are going to be two sides. Reputable media will try their best to cover both sides. Sometimes they fail as one side wont talk. No-one likes being sued so the major papers tend to be pretty sure of their facts before putting something all over the front page. A newspaper needs to make money though and there are only so many “saved cat” stories they can publish. They need to hunt out the good, the bad and the simply odd in the world.
The newspapers need to find some aspect to the story with which the reader can identify. When that story is a private one, a relationship gone bad, potentially silly actions carried out on both sides as a result how do you make it something the country wants to read about? Well obviously it helps if you throw in a celebrity. Better still if you can manage to attach it to a social ill.
So now Veitch has been charged and suddenly his former colleagues are referring to him as “Mr Veitch”, no more matey matey Veitchy any more. I still don’t understand why he said anything when the story broke and I wonder if the story would have had less fuel without his words. The other party has remained silent. All we see of her is the same smiling photo. Veitch is in a no win situation, whatever he did or didn’t do and whatever the circumstances his story has attracted the social ill of domestic violence. So now he has to fight the charges and the public preconception. An the media – how much effort are they putting into the other side of the story?
