The 40 year old was today found dead at her home in East London.

My phone was going crazy.

I couldn't really read a thinks, too.

The notifications are moving so quickly my address was posted online, which was like probably the main thing.

That slut shamed since the age of I don't know what 16.

So to go in there and then leave Love Island and still face the same issues facing at six day, the former Love Island presenter has become the third death connected with the I.

T.

V Show in the last 20 months.

Couldn't believe it, but the mail had pictures have off her flat in Stoke Newington.

I just think it's absolutely unacceptable that ghouls, they're just ambulance chases.

The public have been watching your every move.

Her family's lawyer has confirmed that she took her own life. 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:1.030 We've laughed with you. 00:01:1.340 --> 00:01:2.610 We've cried with you. 00:01:2.840 --> 00:01:24.230 But most of all we've fallen in love This is a story about the convergence point of tabloid media reality TV on digital culture, Two contestants and now the host of Love Island have killed themselves.

Within the space of 20 months.

Is the toxic conversation on reporting around reality TV stars anything new?

Why does it provoked the mob on social media and how responsible away as an audience for what's happening?

I met Megan Barton Hanson, former Love Island contestant turned influencer with two million audience the ground followers to find out what it's like to be so intensely in the public eye.

When you see it on TV, it looks absolutely amazing.

Who would want a free holiday?

The opportunity to fall in love, doing these amazing challenges like the whole thing seems idyllic, and it was, and I don't regret a second off it, but there's so much of people don't say so, the anxiety and the buildup in the pressure before, Obviously I went on Season five.

I think there's a few of them before, so the standards already set and you see how someone's come from being absolutely anyone that you wouldn't look at twice in the supermarket to like every single move is under a microscope on We're not naive.

We know the perks.

We know that we can come out and have this massive platform.

And then when I left, I got taken into, like, a room with a night TV media guy, and he was right before we got to the final.

So before we left, he took Mei and he was that right?

So this is this story that's come out this story that's come out this guy was like, Oh, I was on cloud nine and we got to the final.

I was in love also half a on then All of these horrible stories that West Can we just stay here?

I don't want to go.

Could we just don't love.

I love Reebok.

Hearing kids, Give your case case?

Yeah. 00:03:0.510 --> 00:03:1.710 Oh, don't you start. 00:03:2.730 --> 00:03:5.450 If you read, all the stories have been written about you whilst you're in there. 00:03:6.140 --> 00:03:14.930 What was most what do you have like the strongest reaction to and so obviously in my past has been very colorful.

Like I've worked in the sex industry, I've stripped, I've done web calm.

I've glamour model sold of that.

I kind of expected and I was aware, and I prepared myself mentally for that.

It was the white.

I looked on the fact that people were troubling me and Billy in May when I was a 14 year old girl.

I've just been how you wouldn't see a 14 year old walk down Street, but oh, my God, look at that.

But just because I've put myself out there to make about a life for myself to get out of the sex industry and then paint our lives the way looks as at 14 I just think that's disgusting.

Are you talking about the coverage of, like your surgeries that we're referring to a picture of you as a teenage girl? 00:03:55.740 --> 00:04:0.780 Could you explain sort of what led you toe have surgery in the first place? 00:04:1.540 --> 00:04:5.780 So I was bullied at school from a young girl like you six. 00:04:5.780 --> 00:04:13.980 Probably it started, and like I had really stick out is, and I think every young girl's insecure, even young, like everybody's insecure at that age.

It's most awkward time of your life, teenage years, just horrendous.

Aren't you, like overthink everything Kids can be so cruel for May.

I made that choice for May so the media, they shouldn't have covered it.

They shouldn't have.

But I don't even know if that was it was even a journalist who gone and dug her out.

Or it was someone I went to school with, who is better?

And I think that reflects more on them than me as a person, because the only reason even the journalist or the person I went to school with has leaked.

That is to put me down and shame may, so it reflects more on them.

The May There's been so many reality shows like you said, but the only difference is people didn't have the platform to go on be.

No one has to face up to the comments they make so you can make an account within an hour, and then you can say whatever you want. 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:7.400 And I know people who have got good jobs who have got a fulfilled life, but for their form of intimate, they make an account and we'll go about control. 00:05:7.400 --> 00:05:8.550 People's a form of fun. 00:05:9.040 --> 00:05:12.220 So it's that when Big Brother existed, Instagram wasn't big.

People don't have this like screen to hide behind to control people, but now the two of like Collided, so Love Island is huge.

It's all the paper to talk about.

So everyone's talking about the same time.

Instagram has grown, so it's just a terrible time for both of them to collide literally.

Obviously, there's a duty of care for the broadcasters who transmits every single moment of these people's lives on the newspapers, who subsequently tell them apart, need to consider their actions.

But a new part of this phenomenon is the mob, who simultaneously feel ownership of the TV celebrities but also the show and its format.

Married Parry is a journalist. 00:05:54.810 --> 00:06:2.190 She's written a lot about Love Island but was forced to delete all of her social media accounts when the show's militant fan base took issue with her writing. 00:06:2.760 --> 00:06:4.030 Whatever happens, you married. 00:06:4.530 --> 00:06:5.720 So basically what happened? 00:06:5.720 --> 00:06:7.710 I wrote an article about Love Island like I do. 00:06:7.720 --> 00:06:10.350 It was my job to It's just have a normal day for us.

Nothing big wrote based off a pressure release.

You know, you take the information in that.

That's what's gonna happen tonight.

Right up.

No big deal.

Fast forward.

Two weeks.

The article was picked to go on the show and be shown in a game to the island is it was taken a bit of context, but I didn't really bother me at the time.

Then the tweets and the abuse that it coming when the fans got hold of it.

And obviously reality TV show found could be a little bit intense at times way no intense.

Just you know the classics.

Go kill yourself.

Die hole.

I'm gonna come grab you.

I'm gonna jump.

You slit your throw.

It was just It was disgusting life.

But most of them are coming from accounts without no pictures or pictures of cartoons.

People hiding behind like some sort of avatar. 00:06:56.420 --> 00:07:1.550 It was disgusting, but yes, a journalist is kind of a part of your job. 00:07:1.940 --> 00:07:3.580 But I've never had it to that degree. 00:07:4.300 --> 00:07:5.060 It was not. 00:07:6.630 --> 00:07:7.400 You're a cunt. 00:07:9.270 --> 00:07:11.770 Smoke head for doing that to fin your bitch.

You're a prick.

I hate you.

Your trump.

The height of your career is a lie.

Well done.

Hoping mom's proud.

I deleted my accounts after like 24 hours of it being a flat.

At first I thought I could take this.

It's, you know, just muted or my notifications from anyone I wasn't following, so I wasn't getting really anything through, But I could still see them and the d M Z coming through.

So then I made a decision to delete the mall.

Everything like my Facebook instagram.

I need my linked in.

I was scared that people were going through, like, my job history and get in touch with, like, colleagues, people really starting to meddle in my life for either.

No, I was just scared of what could happen.

So I discovered of, like, all of my main social media accounts in any sort of linked to me so people couldn't get me.

My address was posted online, which was, like, probably the main thing.

Yeah, which which was marred. 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:1.800 I saw it when it when my phone was going crazy. 00:08:1.800 --> 00:08:8.870 I couldn't really read a thinks the notifications are moving so quickly, but I remember seeing a screenshot of that, and I was like, What the hell?

I just couldn't believe that was that.

And I reported it and stuff.

I got taken down within a couple of hours, but still Yeah, that was probably the worst part of it.

The death threats and everything is horrendous, but have your address on there's been another level.

Is there something to miss something specific about Love Island that makes people behaving this way?

Because there are reality TV shows before, right?

Or is it the fact that Love Island exists in a world that social media also existed?

His fun is, isn't it?

It's like die hard funds of reality TV shows.

Do you understand how the media work?

They love to watch, Or so they think they know these people and reality there, obsessing over a relationship of people that they are never going to meet.

They don't know them.

They're never going to meet that.

Maybe they will meet and greet well done.

But they're not.

They're friends, you know.

I mean, like, it's ridiculous that people get so invested.

But that's kind of how it works. 00:09:0.060 --> 00:09:2.210 And I think of show like Love Island is just come. 00:09:2.210 --> 00:09:10.190 This massive thing now has become so big, so powerful in terms of its followers that those people on the show could do anything that people who worship you know.

I mean, they could say that they've killed a family member.

Get your great well done.

You That's the kind of culture that I think it's becoming.

It's dangerous.

It's a social.

Media is obviously handing 100 Love Island.

When I watch in when everyone really watches it, they like having an opinion on it.

And if you've got no one to talk to about that opinion, you go on to Twitter.

You got on Instagram to see what the means are.

You discuss it with other people on when they latch onto something that's, you know, bad happening on.

Everyone kind of likes egging each other on to jump onto rich and onto the bandwagon, and that plays a huge part in the trolling Andi hate that people get.

Everyone loves to hate the same person.

I hate the same thing, but it's past.

In a few hours, they're onto hating or loving the next thing.

But they don't seem to think about the damage that that little moment of hatred does.

The people are getting it.

Finally, you're going toe.

You care?

I'm watching the show, I don't know.

I don't know if there's some sort of responsibility to ensure that this hatred stops on in cases like what happened to me that's actually been fueled by the show is what it wasn't just the parts that they deliberately cause drama, which fuels hates.

And I feel like that all the way it run the way it's structured.

That will needs to massively change if the show needs to carry on with people watching it.

If they really do want to stand up for you, no debts and the hate and the trolling, then they should stop watching it.

Married Story illustrates the relationship between the media, celebrities and the public.

It's not a simplistic or singular in direction of some would have you believe there's an incredible sadness in the fact that it's taken the suicide of the show's presenter for its audience to hashtag be kind to one another.

How responsible Always, viewers.

If there wasn't such an insatiable appetite for Love Island stories about it and its former contestants, would any of these problems exist?

Death by media has existed for decades. 00:10:59.260 --> 00:11:1.050 It prompts a few days of soul searching. 00:11:1.110 --> 00:11:5.270 But then what changes way continue to read the scandals. 00:11:5.490 --> 00:11:7.700 We get excited for the winter version of Love Island. 00:11:7.980 --> 00:11:11.080 We love to hate someone and say mean things when they appear on the telly.

Social media weaponize is this worst part of ourselves.

It combines perceived ownership over a personal character and the ability to send abuse direct their pockets.

Influence of Meghan L.

A.

B.

Has stopped blogging on YouTube, where she has nearly 100,000 subscribers, describing it as the most negative space out there for me.

Another influencer claiming Hooper, better known by her pseudonym mother of daughters, deleted all of her social media accounts after having been found creating fake ones to abuse and troll her own family, bloggers, even her own husband.

There are rules for how broadcasters and newspapers can behave.

They don't currently extend to the digital realm.

Tracy Braven is the shadow culture secretary and formerly an actress in Coronation Street. 00:12:2.990 --> 00:12:4.930 I met with her to talk about the problem. 00:12:6.390 --> 00:12:10.660 We were talking for sad reasons, really just needs to be said.

I think initially, Caroline Flack, very sadly, to grow in life.

It's a reason to have a conversation about how we treat people in the public eye on how a media in particular treat people.

Obviously she had her own issues, and we don't know what those are, but the way in which she had been treated by the press, I think was unfair and actually unacceptable, because what came out of Levinson is that we would be able to get self regulation that that what had happened with all the phone hacking Milly Dowler in all of that that that would now be part there would be a whole new regime.

But it seems like just things have continued inland.

Certainly you know, front pages of her bedroom with blood. 00:12:59.310 --> 00:13:2.180 I mean, we don't know if they're real images or not, but really do. 00:13:2.180 --> 00:13:10.090 We won't see those Onda Also I this week I couldn't believe it that the male had pictures of off her flat in Stoke Newington.

I just think it's absolutely unacceptable that ghouls, they're just ambulance chasers.

We must have a duty of care that it goes beyond the online platforms but into newspapers as well, because I do think she was picked out specifically as me and media sort of fodder as legislators.

It's our job to make sure that's just because of good fortune, that you've become a public figure, that then it's not open season on your life.

There should be some expectation off some element of a private life.

Is there an element of okay, Minute, Simmons, fair game. 00:13:52.530 --> 00:14:0.950 But that some level of reporting is justified that some level of covering that person's life is justified because they volunteered, They wanted themselves. 00:14:1.240 --> 00:14:8.120 Well, Theo, experience that I've had when I was a supposed the most famous I've ever seen. 00:14:8.240 --> 00:14:9.940 Because as an actor, you're famous, you're not. 00:14:9.950 --> 00:14:10.790 You're famous, you know.

And this is that roller coaster.

Well, who knows?