Nairobi News

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‘Times of London’ trolled for sunbather headline


The Times of London newspaper has been trolled for a headline on the stowaway who fell off a Kenya Airways plane earlier in the week.

The headline “Sunbather nearly hit by falling body is Oxford graduate” has been slammed as insensitive to the deceased who “risked it all for a better life”.

Media analysts say the newspaper focused on trivialities: It focuses on where the sunbather schooled (Oxford University) and his course (Software Development).

Analysts are also accusing the paper of intruding into the privacy of the sunbather who was left truamatised by the incident as he was a few meters from where the body fell.

POOR SUNBATHER

Celebrated Kenyan journalist John Allan Namu noted that the headline writer had chosen to ignore the life that was lost.

“Of course, to this paper, a falling body might as well have been a falling rock,” he said.

Zoe Flood, a journalist, said the story was important because “someone was so desperate for a better life – and so misled – that they took this impossible risk. – There has been a *major* security breach at a critical regional airport. – And, yes, tremendous trauma for all those affected.”

She said that the headline “sums up the British elite’s obsession with itself -and a “very clear perceived hierarchy both domestically and internationally”.

“The poor sunbather should be left alone + his background is irrelevant. What the British press isn’t paying attention to, mostly, is what drove that person to stow away, and HOW they did it – on a major international airline, at a major international airport. That’s key,” she tweeted.

HORRIFIC DEATH

Paul Mitchell tweeted: “What a completely (redacted) headline. Surely there were multiple points where people should have gone, ‘actually, this isn’t relevant at all’.”

Lady haja added: “This made me angry. The sheer disregard for the tragedy of a human who was so desperate and found such a horrific death is infuriating.”

The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has opened investigations into the June 30 incident where a body of a stowaway fell off a Kenya Airways plane as it descended at the Heathrow Airport in London, England.