"I have no brother"

Richie - 8 Apr 23 12:52 PM

punter99 - 5 Apr 23 5:33 PM

The media reaction to this case was very unexpected. A lot of the newspapers who absolutely hate SO, were extremely critical of Philip Schofield, for disowning his brother.

We know that the view of the press, is that SO are inhuman monsters, being pure evil and incapable of rehabilitation, so you would have thought their advice to Philip Schofield, would be to have nothing to do with his brother anymore. But it wasn't.

A lot of the commentators, who regularly call for SO to receive the most brutal punishments possible, came out and said that they would never disown a family member, 'no matter what they had done', because blood is thicker than water etc.

I think it shows how, when an SO is somebody that you know, rather than a stranger, then people do see them differently. In other words, they see the person, rather than just the offence.

If you dehumanise somebody, then it is easier to treat them as a monster, but when they are humanised, it is much more difficult. There is a lesson in there for the media, but will they now learn from this and cover these stories differently in future?

I doubt the media will ever behave any differently. The treatment of SO's by newspapers is absolutely terrible but it is done so people buy newspapers and more commonly now click on articles.

I wish there was a law so that newspapers could only report the facts of a case rather than using terms such as pervert, sicko etc etc. I think that would help a lot for SO's to be less targeted.

With him disowning his brother this is the initial reaction of some people. Given time he maybe able to come to terms with it.

I was in prison with a lifer who had a famous brother who came to visit and nothing has been reported in the press about it so he may well end up visiting his brother in prison at some point once the initial pain and newspaper articles back down. I doubt any newspaper will report this and if they do will people really be interested? I really do think it was a gut reaction to keep his career intact.

The click bait headlines are there to see all the time. When they were talking about tagging driving licences and passports to track name changes one newspaper run the headline 'Calls for Sex Offenders To Be Tagged' which means something totally different to the article.