Saturday 21 February 2009

Is there such a thing as "Celebrity Cancer" ?

I am sure that we are all (unless you have lived in a cave...or on the moon, for the last few months!) aware of the tragic story of Jade Goody, the 27 year old woman who found fame on Channel 4's Big Brother reality show.
Now diagnosed a having only weeks or months to live, she and her fiancee are due to be wed on Sunday 22nd February 2009.
As much as our hearts go out to Jade, there is a feeling within the cancer community (if there is such a thing!) that the media appears to place much more emphasis and attention on people suffering from "The big C" (as the Sun so creatively put it), if they carry some sort of celebrity status.
This is not just a cheap and arrogant pop at Jade, and in fact, to be fair, she has all the reasons in the world to turn to her advantage any generosity exhibited by the press at this awful time after her mauling not so long ago (at their hands!) after the CBB "racism" fiasco, when she was pretty well given a hell of a bashing by a wide range of journalists as they extracted every last drop of "front page frenzy" in relation to the story.

This is what is posted on various websites:

http://www.whatnow.org.uk/cancer-forums/jade-goody-and-talking-about-cancer-observer-newspaper

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=993095

http://forums.itv.com/806059/ShowThread.aspx

http://www.cancerchat.org.uk/clearspacex/thread/1156

The press it appears are very selective about what they print about cancer stories,every day people are dying from the disease, some a lot poorer and a lot younger than Jade and having had a look around some of the websites on the Internet, it appears that "ordinary folk with cancer" are getting a touch fed up with the media circus that Jade's cancer fight, appears to have become at the hands of the press and sadly the only real winners being the newspapers bank balances !.

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