Caroline Flack has left an indelible impression on my conscience
There is something I have struggled with for more than three decades now. This past week it has thundered to the front of my mind and seemed to yell out at me from every TV bulletin, newspaper and social media comment.
How is it that a profession which is so vital to democracy, has been responsible for uncovering some of the biggest scandals and wrongdoing in our history, can sometimes get it so wrong?
How has a fantastic advance in communication metamorphosed into a social media where people behave in a way that is cruel and dangerous?
As a journalist, journalism teacher and now politician I have struggled to reconcile the conflict between the aims and principles of the vast majority of my former colleagues in the media and the minority in society who undermine us all with their obsession with the puerile gossip which damages peoples’ lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I have immense respect for the vast majority of journalists and suspect most of them share my frustration over being constantly called to answer for behaviour which bears no relation to what we did, or still do, for a living.
I will defend to the end the right of the press to challenge and hold to account those with power and influence in our society.
And I am aware that much of the problem lies not with traditional outlets but with a social media that is not subject to the same sort of regulation that affects all, but most particularly broadcast media.
But I can’t help feeling that it is time we all stopped passing the buck and accepted things have to change.
“Have we forgotten how to be kind?” a woman asked this week on Question Time. I so hope she is wrong.
Almost exactly two years ago I made a speech in parliament calling for a better balance between that freedom of speech and of the press to scrutinise and hold those in power to account, with the rights of the individual.
A phrase I used at the time – that those vital freedoms must not “be at the cost of the individual – to their privacy in times of grief or hardship, to their hard-won personal or professional reputations” – has been central to my thoughts this week.
I was originally attracted to a career in journalism by the courageous reports from Vietnam that I had watched as a child.
That urge to write the first draft of history. To uncover the injustices, medical cover-ups or corruption which can blight society.
No student who applied to the journalism diploma on which I was a lecturer ever came to me and said they wanted to write about people’s private lives and innermost secrets.
Usually it was Hunter S Thompson, Martha Gellhorn, John Pilger or occasionally a modern TV journalist that they looked to for inspiration.
Without exception they should be proud of the careers they have built since.
So having said all of that you will perhaps understand that when I was told last weekend that Caroline Flack had been found dead I was overcome with anger and a dread that I was about to see the same public dance of blame shifting and hand washing that I have witnessed so often.
The media is not solely to blame for what has happened, they may not even be one of the main sources of the pain which led to her death.
But perhaps we have to accept that somehow our contribution to what sometimes seems like an unquenchable thirst for information on peoples’ private concerns, issues and pain has been unhealthy.
I know from personal experience that social media offers an anonymous voice to those who have no compunction about taking the loosest of speculation and using it to torment those they often do not know and have never met.
Our newspapers and broadcast media, which are so often a force for good, should use that influence now to try to outlaw that tendency which is damaging so many lives.
And on social media we need to grasp the responsibility.
I know the argument about people who seek celebrity, and politicians who seek election, have to accept that they are in the public eye.
Surely, however, that should not extend to their loved ones or to an intrusion into their physical or mental health?
Too often in the past we have trusted that things would change, that society would not accept people being hounded and their lives destroyed.
But time after time that expectation has failed to become a reality. It needs now to be more than a hoped for change.
We have a social responsibility as individuals to behave better and refuse to accept an approach that is cruel to the point of being merciless.
More than that politicians have a responsibility to behave in a way that ends with people looking up to them rather than down on them.
Perhaps it’s time we listened to the clamour from the public to shift the balance of power from those who can bully, often behind the anonymity of online platforms, to those who need protection from them.
Returning to parliament this week I am aware that attention may well be focused on how we respond to this latest tragedy.
I will take with me one of the final statements of a woman I never met, but who has left a huge indelible impression on my conscience.
In a world where you can be anything, be kind.
Christine Jardine is the Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West