Last week Crooked Timber noted how the BBC reported the possible disappearance of 300 African children from British schools underneath a report on the buyout of Man Utd by Malcolm Glazer. This week it's Kylie Minogue's breast cancer.
Manic at Bloggerheads notes that the Scum has "nearly a dozen pages" of "coverage and analysis" on this story. Even the Guardian put it on the front page, and it came before a report on the body count in Uzbekistan on ITV. It pushed the Queen's speech with its threat of ID cards off the front page of the Daily Mirror.
This is nothing new - I remember the day after the Braer oil tanker went down off the coast of Scotland, causing the usual massive spillage. Every paper led with the story, including the Daily Sport, but not the Scum which led with a story about Princess Margaret's chain smoking!
Oh, why are people so obsessed with 'celebrities'???
Maybe people are obsessed with breast cancer. After all it killed 13,000 women in Britain in 2002. http://www.breastcancercare.org.uk/Breastcancer/Breastcancerfactsandstatistics
Kylie being diagnosed with it simply highlights that it is a killer of young women as well who don't check as often as medical experts would recommend. Don't be down on the story just because it involves a celebrity.
salaams you've commented on Kylie, yet you've ignored teh MPACUK documentary 'Operation Muslim Vote' broadcast Monday 17th May/ Why is that? You criticised MPACUK in the past you could have made an effort to views their work and comment on it.
The news is depressing no matter what frontpage headline they run with. I think they know that if they put body counts at the top people just wouldn't buy the paper... and there is something also to be said about desensitization with all these doom and gloom news stories too. It's a bit like we watch all these foreign people dying in horrendous ways and go "Aw how awful etc", then forget about it and give solace to ourselves - very cathartic which requires no effort or change on our part at all. I think for the news to be meaningful in any way they should have helpline numbers and actions the public can take to HELP others - you know, donate money or get involved in some way, volunteer work. The trouble with news altogether is that it severs the "audience" from the sufferers and makes us feel useless and powerless to affect any change in the world. We are made to feel like spectators in a meaningless universe. ... IMHO of course.