Yes, regardless of the respectability of the subject.
Is there any newspaper or other media that only use titles for those they consider respectable?
Probably not. But I would have preferred that they make an exception for, I dunno, convicted serial killers.
I don’t think any newspaper editor wants to open that can of worms
I would have thought that he would be “Mr. the Maniac”.
Isn’t “the” a middle name? Alexander the Great. Charles the Fat. Charlemagne tha God. They’re written backward like Asian names, so the Times refers to the last as Charlemagne and you just have to figure out which one from context.
Although I would love to see the Times refer to Mr. God in its articles.
Not exactly what you’re thinking of, but for a long time, FAZ (one of Germany’s leading papers) would use titles for women but not men. So it would be Scholz, but Frau Merkel. They’re not doing this anymore, it’s now no titles for anybody.
Titled correspondents to the (London) Times invariably sign themselves as the place of which they are (e.g.) earls.
A letter or email from the Earl of Derby would be signed off with ‘Derby’. I’m guessing he does this in other formal communications as well.
But bishops no longer sign with their Latin names when writing to the Times. Or at least they didn’t do so the other week when writing to condemn the government’s Rwanda asylum policy.
In the US, at least, I’ve seen a change in naming conventions among the clergy in my lifetime. When I was a kid, if there was a priest named “John Smith”, he’d (probably) be “Father Smith”. Nowadays, he’d be “Father John”.
(the exception would be if he was a member of a monastic order, in which case he would have always gone by first name, except that the first name would be one he assumed on joining the order, not his birth name)