Staring At Indira Swann And The Ecuador Bus Victims
INDIRA Swann is dead. Indira Swann was killed in a bus crash in Ecuador, alongside four friends: Rebecca Logie (“Inspiring”), Emily Sandler (“Bubbly”), “Sarah Howard “(Caring”) and Lizzie Pincock (“Amazing”).
The Mail has the girls’ profiles. The Mirror leads with a picture of Indira (“Poignant”) and the “LAST EMAIL” she sent home to her parents.
Says the message: “Thanks for being so great and giving me the opportunity to do this. But also for giving me such a lovely home that nothing could stop me wanting to come back.”
The Mirror looks at the “heartbroken parents”. It’s emotive stuff. But Mail readers get not one but six pictures of Louise and Gregory Swann wracked with grief.
We are invited to stare at them. Look at their pain. We are gawping at them, responding to an invitation to stare.
We look. But in doing so we learn nothing of the Swanns. Better, perhaps, if the Mail placed a mirror alongside the shots and asked readers to look at it and think about what such voyeurism says about them.
Posted: 15th, April 2008 | In: Tabloids Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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April 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
…yet here you are repeating the contents of Indira’s last email yourself. Hypocrtical in the extreme to condemn others’ “voyeurism” then do exactly that yourself. Whoever the anonymous author of this article is needs to get off the preacher’s mound.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Indeed. The gawping at the parents is utterly revolting…
April 15th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
It is hard enough to go through losing anybody let alone your best friend who is the same age as you i’ve been there and it takes a long time to come to terms with and heal it is about time Indira’s family & friends were allowed to start their grieving process without all these media interuptions this is not what anybody expected but it is the media portraying this story not Indira’s family or friends!!!!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Indira Swann was one of my best friends, and has been for almost 9 years.
Our friends are devastated by the loss of such a wonderful person. What saddens me the most is the thought that she has become a news story, and is being spoken about by people who had no idea who she really was as if they knew her.
Reporters and televison crews have been hunting down my friends one by one to try and get them to give pictures, appear on television, etc.
Please stop and think about what you are doing. To you she’s just a name and a face, and always will be. To us, she was a friend, and a friend who deserves some dignity.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Its a tragedy indeed.
Their poor families are in shock, and should be left alone