Media coverage painting Mark Duggan as a high-profile and dangerous criminal continued over the next two years. Even the funeral, attended by over a thousand people, was portrayed as a sinister tribute to a gang leader. The funeral procession went from his parent’s home in Tottenham through the Broadwater Farm estate, where crowds gathered.
The Mail featured a picture of mourners stretching their hands out to the coffin under the headline ‘Gangsta salute for a “fallen soldier”’ (10 September 2011), and the Express featured a similar description (10 September 2011) and suggested that they were making ‘gang-land’ salutes (‘Gangsta salute for ‘fallen soldier’ Mark Duggan who sparked riot’, Express, 10 September 2011).
In fact, the mourners were responding to a call by Bishop Kwaku Frimpong-Mason for people to ‘stretch [their] hands towards the casket and thank God for Mark’s life as he begins his heavenly journey’.
The Mail later printed an apology and slightly amended its article; the Express did not.
An image of Mark with a set, unsmiling expression was widely used to accompany articles about his supposed gangster background. This expression was grief – the image had been cropped from a larger photograph of him holding a tribute to his dead daughter at her grave.
