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TThe media have failed to learn from Caroline Flack’s death and must take responsibility for covering public figures struggling with mental health issues, the presenter’s mother said.
Speaking ahead of the release of a Channel 4 documentary that seeks to present a more nuanced portrayal of her “adorable and ordinary” daughter, who committed suicide in February of last year, Christine Flack said she hoped the media that “wrote all the horrible things.” about Caroline “” would remove that before printing anything, at least to find out if it’s true. It’s someone’s life, it’s someone’s child, it’s someone’s sister or brother. She added: “I don’t think they’ve learned yet.”
Christine said there was a risk that speaking out “could lead to a backlash.” “You’re afraid to say anything, or even I shouldn’t say what I’m saying now,” she said. “But you know, someone has to say something at some point and not be afraid… because of what the papers will do to you.”
She pointed to her own experience when she went to her daughter’s home after the incident that led to Caroline’s arrest for assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton, and before The Sun posted a front page photo from Caroline’s room on January 1 with the title. “The bloodbath in Flack’s room”. The photo showed the result of Caroline’s self-harm rather than the incident with Burton.
“They followed me and two other 70 year olds through London one night after cleaning up the blood in Carrie’s apartment, that’s how bad they were,” Christine said. “No, they haven’t changed.”
She described the abrupt change in tone in some tabloids after her daughter’s death and as media criticism became part of the story – as well as allegations that police and prosecution had mismanaged the case , a claim that official critics have deemed unfounded. . “The same newspapers that wrote all the horrible things about Carrie after her death reached out to me and said, oh we would like to do a nice article on her. And you think: what? I do not understand that.
The film, Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death, will premiere at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, March 17. There comes a time when one re-examines how certain parts of the media cover mental health issues, and in particular the treatment of young women in the public eye. After the release of an American documentary exploring the cover of Britney Spears in the 2000s, the Duchess of Sussex’s comments in her interview with Oprah Winfrey prompted calls for more caution in dealing with the issue – alongside some answers making Meghan a liar.
“You can see what’s going on with some people in the press right now,” Christine said at an event ahead of the Meghan and Harry interview release. In the movie, she said of her daughter, “She wasn’t perfect but she had nothing wrong with her. I can’t imagine him writing a nasty thing about someone. And everything that was written about her hurt her. And we said “don’t read it”. But it’s so easy to say, because you read it, right?
While Christine Flack and Caroline’s twin sister Jody criticized the media coverage, they also highlighted the dangers of social media for someone vulnerable in the public eye.
“When I was young, if you were bullied in school, you could get away with it,” Christine said. “You can’t get away from it now because it follows you home, it follows you on your phone. Carrie was the worst – she was looking at her phone all the time. It took charge, which was said. And there could be 30 good things said, one bad thing, and that was it.
She said of social media platforms: “They haven’t protected anyone. I think we know it’s Caroline because she’s my daughter and Jo’s sister, but they’re not protecting anyone. They don’t protect young girls.
She said she saw the events of Christmas 2019 and her relationship with Burton as triggers of a larger crisis her daughter was facing, driven by low self-esteem and high notoriety. “Carrie’s state of mind was such that any of those things could have done it,” she said. “She just hated the idea that people thought she was that horrible person.
Jody said that she “used to tell Carrie that she should do a different job. But she always proved me wrong. She was doing what she did best, and she loved it, and that was completely the wrong advice.
Her sister’s commitment to be a presenter meant her life was bound to be difficult, she said. “Life would have been a lot easier if she had done a different job. But Carrie was never going to have an easy life. It wasn’t designed to do that.
The hardest part of her death, she said, was asking herself, “Could it have happened differently if we had done things differently?”
She said: “It’s hard to imagine a closer bond than the twins. It’s a different world now.
Anna Blue, a television producer and close friend of Caroline, told the filmmakers that the contradictions of her desire for fame never subsided. “Sometimes people ask her if she wants to be famous, which is a really good question,” she said. “And she wanted to be famous, but she just wasn’t emotionally able to deal with all of the issues that come with being famous.”
Presenter Dermot O’Leary, also a friend, said the feedback loop of her position in the public eye was part of the problem. “It was hard, it hurt – unfortunately, as Caroline got more famous, I think she got addicted to assertiveness, and all that terrible maelstrom ended up with us on that couch telling you about it. ‘her now, “he said. “She didn’t have any bad bones in her.
While making the documentary was painful at times, Christine said, filmmakers Charlie Russell and Dov Freedman had “made this year bearable because he was someone we could talk to.” She said she wanted to “show Carrie in a positive light… What was shown at the end was not her.” She wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t her.
The version of Caroline she remembered, she said, was “that positive, kind person, and my daughter and a sister, she never changed and she was kind to us and lovely.”
Anna Blue said her life was only enriched by their relationship. “I will never forget that she made my life so much more fun than it ever would have been,” she said. “I have never met anyone like her. I will never meet anyone else like her.
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