[Reith85]

I thought the obituary for Derek as shown on the BBC News at One was unnecessarily negative

They dragged up load of negative stuff about his time as a political advisor, mentioning how he’d been sacked from a role, and embroiled in a scandal. It was done by the politics department as if he was a marmite political figure. Most people up to that point would only know him as Kate Garraway’s husband.

Many people on X seem to agree

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I'm not sure if I agree with this. To the itv audience, yes, Derek Draper is husband of Kate Garraway and not known for much else, which pretty much defined most of the on-air tributes on itv today (and no doubt, we'll get more of these all next week on Good Morning Britain).

However, it's clear that the BBC report was paying tribute to Derek Draper, not only as husband of Kate Garraway, but also as a one-time political adviser who had a role in setting up New Labour. As an obituary piece, I didn't see anything wrong with it: it served its purpose as an obituary, outlining his life and career. It's no different to the detailed obituaries to Draper that will feature in tomorrow's broadsheet newspapers. The alternative would have been to have just limited it to "Kate Garraway's husband, Derek Draper, has passed away" and airbrush out his political career with hardly any detail about it. I guarantee that critics of the BBC would equally have criticised such an approach, because they didn't show appreciation of Draper's full life and career.

It's not as if Helen Catt's report was austere and factual, either: it was book-ended by clips from 'Caring for Derek', and it ended on a warm note about Derek and his family showing strength throughout his battle.

It would have been different if the BBC report was cold and implying "Don't mourn for this man, he had an awful past", but it didn't - it was simply stating some of the defining aspects of Draper's career. Still, no doubt the BBC-bashing press will be running articles about 'disrespectful BBC' in tomorrow's papers, much to the appeasement of those outraged on X.