Peaches Geldof – was the coverage by newspapers, and TV, over the top? The majority of national newspapers in the UK carried news of the death of Bob Geldof's daughter on their front pages...
The Guardian was one of several national newspapers that featured the death of Peaches Geldof on its front page. Photograph: Guardian
The sudden death of a young woman, especially the daughter of a man as famous as Bob Geldof and with a history of family tragedy, was bound to be a headline event. When news broke that Peaches Geldof had died, aged 25, the Sky News presenter momentarily floundered. Similarly, the BBC's news channel had some unusually nervous moments. What followed was a couple of hours of vacuous, and sometimes embarrassing, interviews with "commentators" who endlessly repeated that it was a tragedy, that it echoed the early death of her mother, Paula Yates, and that Peaches had led an unconventional life. Twitter was scanned for quotable quotes. She was variously described as a journalist, TV presenter, DJ, model, "fashion icon", mother of two, twice-married. There were also vague references to her being "too thin".
The story led the main evening news programmes, pushing down the order developments in Ukraine, the Maria Miller controversy and the Oscar Pistorius trial. It also garnered much more coverage than the death of 93-year-old "legendary" film star Mickey Rooney. Meanwhile, newspapers were able to prepare their news reports, analyses, picture research and tributes without the difficulty of sitting in front of a camera. Most editors decided that the TV news shows were right to give the Peaches Geldof story top billing. Some devoted their entire front page to it, such as the Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Star and Metro. In so doing, they overturned their previous plans to give pictorial pride of place to the Duchess of Cambridge and her son in Australia. Almost every other paper (with the notable exceptions of The Independent and the Financial Times) carried front page pictures and articles about Peaches. Every editor, I noted, avoided the temptation to speculate on the cause of her death, respectfully repeating the statement issued by the police.
Most of the articles nosed off on Bob Geldof's statement, and the headline writers (at the Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and Daily Mail) also relied on his words: "We are beyond pain." I thought Metro's front page bordered on tastelessness. It used the picture Peaches had posted on Twitter of herself, as a baby, in her mother's arms with the headline, "Together again." The Sun did roughly the same inside, using the same picture and the headline, "With mum." The Sun, with seven pages, devoted most space to the story. But its main articles were readable and, in the circumstances, reasonable pieces of work. It stuck, in the main, to facts. Elsewhere, there were instances of speculation about her state of mind, such as the Mail's piece, ""She never got over losing Paula at 11", but it was a sensible assessment of what Peaches had said and written about the subject.
I think the news headlines did over react to the death of Geldof's daughter Peaches who was only 24 years old. As most of the news sources covered her story, it seemed a bit to much as many people die unexpectedly also celebrities. The impact of her being a celebrity could be the reason to the high coverage of her death therefore resulting in every news provider. Most of the newspapers have used the iconic image of her mother Paula Yates who died in 2000 for overdosing heroine and herself as a baby with head title saying 'With mother' or 'Mum'.
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