Responding to the petition against the Daily Mail that I placed yesterday, reader Colkoch wrote:

I hope it gets to one million signatures. This was vicious reporting with no other agenda than selling papers and generating hits. Taking down Littlejohn is a drop a in the bucket on this kind of predatory abusive reporting, but it is a beginning.

Not yet a million - but over 110 000 by yesterday afternoon, according to an email from the organisers (and 130 000 by 3pm British time, according to a later report ).

Incredible! In less than two days, more than 110,000 people have signed our petition to the Daily Mail, calling for columnist Richard Littlejohn to be sacked in the wake of the tragic death of transgender schoolteacher Lucy Meadows.

This evening, there will be a community vigil for Lucy outside the Daily Mail’s headquarters. Can you help us reach our new goal of 150,000 signatures before the vigil, by making sure everyone you know has seen, signed, and shared the petition?

Lucy’s death came after Littlejohn denounced her in his weekly column, using the mocking headline “He’s not only in the wrong body… he’s in the wrong job”. The Daily Mail has a track record of hateful sensationalism, and this time it’s finally gone too far.

Click here to share on Facebook.

The vigil has come and gone. I have no idea if they hit their target of 150 000 before the vigil, but that’s not the end of it. We should push on, reaching the maximum total possible. As Helen Belcher, director of TransMedia Watch, notes in the Guardian report of the vigil below, the behaviour of the Daily Mail in this matter, from initial publication of the disgusting piece to their inadequate response to Meadows’ suicide, is equivalent to showing two fingers to Leveson.

The Leveson inquiry last year, was a lengthy investigation by Lord Justice Leveson, set up by the British parliament, in response to widespread public anger over the excesses of some newspaper groups. In his report at the conclusion of the inquiry, Lord Leveson noted that after several previous investigations, and repeated attempts at self- regulation by the press, it had become clear that self- regulation without statutory backing is simply inadequate. Even so, some politicians backed off, supposedly in the name of press freedom (but possibly out of simple fear of offending the press barons), and what finally emerged last week was a very weak form of statutory underpinning: an arm’s length “Royal Charter” for the Press - for which signing up would be voluntary, not compulsory.

Incredibly, some press groups (and their friends in parliament) are still not satisfied, huffing and puffing about protecting press freedom. In the extensive press and broadcast commentary before and after parliamentary approval for the Charter, I came across repeated insistence that it was not “necessary”, because the worst excesses that had sparked the original public outrage (hacking into mobile phones, and paying bribes to police officers for information) were in any case illegal - and had been ultimately unmasked by the brave investigative journalists of the press.

But - not all the outrageous behaviour of the press is in fact illegal, and not all the harm that is done can be remedied by press reporting after the fact. The story of Lucy Meadows and the Daily Mail - one of the groups that has stated it may not sign the Royal Charter - is a grim reminder of this, and of the weakness of the present Press Complaints Commission. As far as I can tell, there was nothing in Littlejohn’s original column that was in fact, illegal - but a great deal that was patently offensive, calculated simply to whip up public outrage against a private citizen (and boost his readership). There’s a simple word for this - bullying, and bullying kills.

There was a complaint made to the Press Complaints Commission - which produced only a mild slap on the wrist for the Daily Mail, which they will have taken in their stride. Then followed Meadows’ suicide, and widespread public outrage. Still, the reaction by the DM has been completely inadequate - and so, the protests continue, and must continue to do so.

Up to 300 members of the transgender community and supporters gathered outside the Daily Mail headquarters this evening to hold a vigil in memory of Lucy Meadows, the primary school teacher who was found dead last Tuesday after her gender transition was made public by the media.

The candlelit vigil was organised at a grassroots level and even the Facebook event organisers did not know where the idea for it originated. Demonstrators of all walks of life attended the event, carrying candles and placards with messages such as “I am not afraid”.

A group of demonstrators started chanting “Shame on you” to occupants of the Daily Mail’s Northcliffe House, in Kensington – but they were swiftly quietened by activists who wanted the vigil to be peaceful.

Transgender activist Natacha Kennedy, an ex-primary school teacher who quit her job in 2007 because she thought it would be too risky to come out as a member of the transgender community, said the event was completely spontaneous.

“Normally someone like me does the organising. It just seems to have sprung up by people I don’t know and not regular trans activists. I’m quite amazed by the response of a lot of people who are not transgender,” she said.

Kennedy believes the Daily Mail’s coverage of Meadows must have contributed to her death. “Primary school teaching is the most stressful job,” she said. “The sort of pressure Lucy would have been under would have been enormous.”

Children at C of E school St Mary Magdalen’s in Accrington, Lancashire, were informed in December that their teacher, Nathan Upton, would transition to live as a woman over the Christmas break and return as Lucy Meadows. Local and later national press picked up the story, and Richard Littlejohn’s comment in the Daily Mail, ‘He’s not only in the wrong body … he’s in the wrong job’, has received much criticism.

Meadows contacted the PCC in January to complain about the way she had been treated in the press. Her death on Tuesday is not being treated as suspicious, and it is believed she committed suicide.

Jane Fae, a campaigning journalist, said the issue was not about apportioning blame for Meadows’ death, but about how she was treated in life and after her death – when some tabloids “were still writing about her as a man”.

Helen Belcher, director of TransMedia Watch, an organisation that monitors representation of transgender people in the media, said that press coverage had been more virulent since Leveson released his report. “It feels to me like they’re sticking two fingers up at Leveson.”

-continue reading at Guardian

Sign the Petition:

There are in fact two petitions in circulation: the one at SumofUs has exceeded it’s original target of 150 000. Now at over 165 000, it has increased the target to 200 000.

At Change.org, a second petition is sitting just over 35 000, with a target of 50 000.

Related articles

• Tell the Daily Mail: Richard Littlejohn’s in the Wrong Job. (queeringthechurch.com)
• Trans teacher Lucy Meadow’s death turns town against press (guardian.co.uk)
• Daily Mail urged to fire Richard Littlejohn after death of Lucy Meadows (guardian.co.uk)
• Trans teacher believed to have killed herself ‘had told of press harassment’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Lucy Meadows: Vigil Outside Daily Mail Attracts Large Crowd (musingsofamildmanneredman.com)
• NEWS: 130,000 Signatures On Petitions For The Sacking Of Richard Littlejohn (musingsofamildmanneredman.com)