No News Is Good News

For this brief I had to select an interesting headline form Saturday 17th October and produce a body of research based on it. To begin with I looked at several headlines, one titled 'PRAMBO', which was about a pram rolling off a train platform and being pushed along the track by a train, the baby escaped alive, with a cut on his head, the second one was about Stephen Gately's death, and the third was 'Pythons 40yrs on' which was about the 40th anniversary of Monty Python.

I chose the headline 'Nothing will ever be the same without our dearest friend Stephen...rest in peace, brother', from The Sun, mainly because of the amount of media coverage the story has had, and some of the mystery surrounding it, which may come across as morbid, but at the time of print, the public were unaware what had killed Gately.

There were a number of ideas within this concept that would be research points:
- The tattoos (that Boyzone have got as a memorial to Stephen).
- Stephen’s husband – Andrew Cowles.
- The remaining band members.
- Funeral.
- The statement read out by Ronan Keating.
- Family and other mourners.
- Stephen’s life.
- The actual cause of death.
- The night of the death.
- Fans’ tributes.

Three ideas that I will take forward and investigate are:
- The remaining band members, especially Ronan Keating’s speech at Palma Airport.
- The funeral, the service in Majorca at a chapel, and a memorial service in London.
- The death and the events leading up to it- what really happened?

To do this the only research methods to get this key information is from the newspapers and internet sites, I did this with an open mind so I wouldn't believe the first story I read. I collected research from a number of sources, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail, I simply selected these because they are known for there straight to the point, no nonsense views, unlike The Sun, my original choice of paper, which does and is known for embellishing. I also took information from Wikipedia on the view of Gately's death, again with an even more open mind, as Wikipedia is editable by the public and may hold biased views.

I highlighted key points throughout the documents, and from here I narrowed down the key points even more and put them on to a mind map so cross examination could be done, as some papers shared similar views, while others contrasted completely.

Ready for the next session, we had to note down a statement of fact and a statement of opinion from the research, backed up by supporting evidence;

STATEMENT OF FACT:
Stephen Gately died from a genetic, undiagnosed disease known as pulmonary oedema.

EVIDENCE:
The post mortem results showed that the cause of death was natural (pulmonary oedema), which was paternally inherited.

STATEMENT OF OPINION:
'...our world changed forever when we lost our friend.'

EVIDENCE:
This is from a statement read out by Ronan Keating on behalf of the remaining members of Boyzone, read out atPalma Airport in Majorca.

We were then given the task of picking out 10 adjectives, 10 verbs, 10 objects (hand drawn) and 10 symbols (also hand drawn) which related to our research:

Adjectives: cold, numb, white, happy, sad, beautiful, bubbly, solemn, natural, brightest, heavy.
Verbs: speak, die, cry, carry, promise, pray, smoke, drink, made, change.
Objects (drawn): coffin, church, plane, flowers, star, gravestone, joint
Symbols (drawn): skull and cross bones, gay pride flag...

This exercise helped to kick start the visual thinking process ready to be given the next part of the brief...