The emo protest outside the Daily Mail offices was the ‘friendliest protest London has ever seen’according to NME news editor Paul Stokes, who has been writing about the movement’s clash with the paper for the past two years.
The protest, which saw around 40 fans of band My Chemical Romance gather outside the paper’s London headquarters on Sunday and another group of around 200 gather at Marble Arch, was sparked by a series of articles the Daily Mail published in the aftermath of the suicide of 13-year-old My Chemical Romance fan Hannah Bond last year.
At her inquest, the coroner criticised the music genre’s influence in her death, and the Daily Mail published a piece that claimed that ‘no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”.
Stokes, who has been following the emo debate since it began in 2006, said that the protest was less about the ‘Evil Daily Mail’and more about fans defending an attack on a band that they see as a positive force.
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‘Irresponsible’
Stokes told Press Gazette that the Daily Mail’s coverage was largely a result of the paper and its readers having no frame of reference for emo, which is a relatively new movement. He was also critical of the coroner’s ‘irresponsible’comments.
The Daily Mail said in a statement responding to the protest that ‘genuine concerns were raised’at the inquest and that the coroner found ‘the emo overtones concerning death and associating it with glamour very disturbing”.
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