Boyzone’s record label, Polydor, officially filed a complaint against the article written by Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir on the death of Stephen Gately. The label said that it contacted the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about its move, but stated that they had no further comment.
Apart from Polydor, 25,000 individuals contacted the PCC to complain about the article, which wrote about the Boyzone singer’s death as a blow to the “happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships”. The PCC also wrote to the Daily Mail for a response to the complaints made.
A full investigation, however, can not be conducted unless direct complaints from Gately’s family are received. The family and representatives of Gately have not filed a complaint so far.
Negative responses towards Moir’s article, which referred to the singer’s death as “strange, lonely and troubling”, flooded blogs and other social networking sites.
“The Gately family are – perhaps understandably – keen to register their boy’s demise on the national consciousness as nothing more than a tragic accident,” the article wrote. “Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.”
Moir also wrote: “As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine. For, once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.”
Complainants said that the article spoke against homosexuality, but Moir denied this saying that it was “never my intention” to involve Gately’s sexual preference.
Moir responded, “In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated Internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.”
