Ben Stokes a raging fire on The Sun for digging into past

Dubai - The British tabloid ran a cover story about his half-brother and half-sister's murder in 1988

As unfortunate as it may sound or be, people take pleasure in seeing someone's downfall. They envy the others' success and are waiting for an opportunity to pull the other down. That's the harsh reality of this world that we live in.
People just love to read gossip no matter how grisly it may be. They take particular interest in the private lives of public figures with the thinking that there's nothing 'private' about them. After all, they are a public figure and it is all part of the public domain.
But they do not, for a moment, think what that public figure is going through and the damage it will do. The Sun, one of Britain's 'reputed' tabloid crossed a line with their cover story on Tuesday.
The man in the spotlight, or in question, was the World Cup-winning and the Headingley Test hero Ben Stokes.
Not that the ginger-haired Englishman is a stranger to being featured on the tabloid's pages, especially after his brawl outside a nightclub two Septembers ago.
But then, the London-headquartered media outlet plunged to a new low after digging into Stokes' past, especially about his half-brother and half-sister's death.
The Sun ran a story with the headline: Hero Ben's brother and sister were shot dead.' The story said that his mum Deb's two children Tracey, aged eight, and Andrew, aged four, were murdered by her ex-husband Richard Dunn in 1988, three years before Ben's birth.
The story went into detail and interviewed Jacqui Dunn, Richard's daughter from a previous marriage.
Hurt and angered, Stokes gave the perfect riposte in a heart-rending statement on his twitter handle on Tuesday. "Today the Sun has seen fit to publish extremely painful, sensitive and personal details concerning events in the private lives of my family, going back more than 31 years," the statement read.
"It is hard to find words that adequately describe such low and despicable behaviour, disguised as journalism," it added. The full letter is posted on his account.
It may have been a slow news day but this was cheap, to say the least, from The Sun. Such a private matter, especially when it involves the death of loved ones, shouldn't be brought in the open, more so of an incident that happened three decades ago.
The Sun had no business to publish such a story of an icon, a cricketing hero, who has served English cricket, and with distinction.
Stokes should perhaps send a battery of lawyers and take The Sun and its reporter to court and sue them six figures in damages.
With this, the tabloid has hit the gutter. An editor once said, "Today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chips wrapping."
The Sun doesn't even deserve to be that.
james@khaleejtimes.com