Media respect family and friends of Liam Payne at his funeral learning from past mistakes

By Oshin Khandelwal on Unsplash

Many fans are devastated by the loss of One Direction member, Liam Payne who unexpectedly died on 16 October 2024.

 Payne’s close friends and family members attended his funeral yesterday at St Mary’s Church near his hometown, Wolverhampton.

 Media, paparazzi and fans had shown up too which was managed by barriers surrounding the service to keep uninvited guests from intruding.

The family had to take these security precautions yesterday as previous celebrity deaths have been taken too far by some fans and media.

 After Kobe Bryant’s death in 2020, his helicopter crash was mocked at a comic convention in China. This outraged many fans and was seen to be disrespectful to the memory of Bryant and his family.

 Another example of this is the death of Caroline Flack. The media had reportedly been “hounding” her over the apparent assault of Lewis Burton, which she had denied.

Liam Payne’s funeral by Dan Kitwood via Gettyimages

 She had trauma which was made public by the press, and this was assumed to be very distressing for her, leading to the cause of her death.

 Media and paparazzi kept their distance and only took pictures and videos of what they were permitted to do.

 However, fans breached boundaries when a video released by the Independent newspaper showed onlookers recording the service with their phones while standing in the graveyard and others peeking over cemetery walls.

 Jennifer Chen, who has a fascination for how media report celebrity information, believed the media have learned about respecting boundaries from past events such as the death of Princess Diana.

 She said: “The media were asked not to take certain pictures and respected this wish. Fans of Liam, online, were saying not to attend the funeral which is what the family had asked them to respect.

 “I believe the funeral should’ve been entirely private. A funeral is about the person and the family’s memories. At the end of the day, fame or not, he’s a brother, son and father and I don’t think fans should attend funerals and they are only appropriate at memorials. Funerals are personal.”