When the story is someone's life

A headline can take seconds to read and even less time to share. But for the person whose name is in it, the consequences can last much longer.

The recent death of Professor Jason Arday has left me thinking about something we don't talk about enough: what happens to the human being at the centre of a media storm.

I don't want his story to become another headline that briefly makes people stop and think, only to disappear beneath whatever comes next. I hope it makes us look more seriously at the culture we've created around these stories, because it isn't just a story. It is someone's lived experience.

What happened to Jason reached a scale my own experience never did, and I don't pretend otherwise. But some of what surrounded it, I recognise.

I have experienced media coverage that did not reflect the reality of my own life. I know how debilitating and dehumanising it can be to see a version of yourself presented publicly that you don't recognise, and to realise that strangers may encounter that version before they ever encounter you.

You can become reduced to the worst thing that has happened. Somebody's gossip. Somebody's entertainment. A story for people to have an opinion on before moving on to the next one. And when enough people are telling you who you are, loudly enough, it can become frighteningly easy to lose sight of what you once knew to be true about yourself.

You can't follow a headline around explaining yourself. You can't sit beside every stranger reading it and say, there's more to this than you know. At some point you realise you've lost control of something you probably never thought you could lose: the ability to tell your own story, and with it, some control over your own identity.

I know how much that can hurt.

This isn't an argument against journalism or difficult conversations. It's an argument for humanity within them, and for media coverage that is considered, responsible and proportionate.

There has to be space between legitimate reporting and the relentless pursuit of a story because people are clicking on it. Being first cannot matter more than being careful. An allegation should not become an accepted truth through repetition, and speculation should not acquire credibility simply because enough people have shared it. The language used, the prominence given to a story, the context surrounding it and the cumulative effect of repeated coverage all matter.

And this responsibility doesn't stop with journalists anymore, because all of us have the ability to amplify what we see. When we repost something we haven't properly read, repeat something we don't know to be true, add another cruel comment or treat somebody else's pain as entertainment, we become part of what is happening around that person.

The uncomfortable difference is that we can put our phones down afterwards and carry on with our lives. We don't see what happens on the other side of the screen. We don't know what that person has read, what they have heard, what conversations are happening within their family, or what else they might already be carrying.

That uncertainty should make us more careful with one another, not less.

None of that prevents scrutiny. None of it asks journalists to stop asking difficult questions. It simply asks that we don't become so consumed by the story that we stop seeing the person inside it.

Perhaps have we remembered the human being? needs to be a question we ask much earlier, rather than something we remember when the damage has already been done.

Because be kind shouldn't be a sentiment reserved for the aftermath.

No human being should be reduced to the most clickable version of their life. Behind every headline is a person who still has to live beyond it.