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Away with the Fairies- The Travel Diary of an Irish WebFairy

papers only care if you are famous.

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by
Niamh
, 12-09-2007 at 08:04 AM (1417 Views)
It really amazes me how newspapers really dont give a damn about us regular people getting on with our lives. Heres the picture.
A couple of weeks ago two young lads in Cork were rushed into hospital from a party. They had been feeling ill. Both ended up in a coma, and one died there at the beginning of the week. It was drug related, as the two lads had taken some bad cocaine. There were only small articles about it in the paper.

On Sunday morning an Irish Model was rushed into hospital. She had been in a medically induced coma till she died on thursday. She died from what is believed to have been a bad cocktail of cocaine with possible another drug and rinsing it down with champange. Every single newspaper in the country has been jam packed with stuff about the model since she was brought to hospital. Now you are looking at pages dedicated to her funeral and the investigation.

In the sun yesterday, a young girl called Rachel who bravely admitted to being a heroine addict and ended up doing a documentary about her recovery from addiction slammed the papers for their behaviour. And she was right too. What about all the other people who have died from similar circumstances, people from working class backrounds, even unknown middle class people. Why is it that major things only get done when welknown people suffer. There is no justice there.

It is a tragic thing that happened to the 24 year old model, but events even more tragic happen daily outside the world of Showbiz that should be given as much attention.
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Comments

  1. B-Mental's Avatar
    You don't want to advertise the drug dealers. They check the papers and internet for info too. The police are cool about it I'm sure, and then the papers will be out there.
  2. andave_ya's Avatar
    Meh, magnify that a hundred times and you'll have an idea of what it's like in California. What about Britney Spears? EVERY SINGLE THING she does is put in the newspapers far and above the call of duty. What about Anna Nicole Smith? Yugh. Feel sorry for the lot of them, but tmi most certainly!
  3. mtpspur's Avatar
    An unfortunate side effect of publishing news and staying in the business of publishing news is to publish material that will SELL. It is NOT an altruistic business. Again unfortunate. I'm more concerned for a young lady three miles from me who I'm convinced will overdose someday then I will ever be about Brittney whose news shelf life is just about over if history has anything to say. She'll be back in the where are they now columns in a few years. We do what we can but it is so little when you are detemine to self destruct.
  4. kiz_paws's Avatar
    You have made a very good point, Niamh. Surely it is a shame for anyone, but to magnify something just because it smells of fame (to sell a few dollars more of papers).... hmmm, something smells.
  5. Virgil's Avatar
    I understand Niamh, and at some point in my life I may have made the same point. But in this case I think the fault lies in ourselves, in the public's attention. The general public doesn't know who those two boys are, and their situations are unfortunately similar to many. The model is a known person. The story is not that a woman (the model) has had a drug incident, it's the model that we know has had a problem. I hope I made the distinction clear. The story is not the drugs, it's the model.

    Personally I generally hate the media. In the few instances that I have known of a story in real life, the media has gotten it wrong. And i hear that from almost anyone involved in a media story. They get some aspect of it wrong more often than not. I wouldn't trust the details of what one reads in the newspapers as far as one can throw a stick.
  6. Niamh's Avatar
    I only found out this morning that the second lad died on Saturday after his life support machine was switched off. Today, as far as i could see, only ONE paper delt with the two cases as equal, and that paper was a cork based paper. It had a front page with all three victims, all pictures were equal and the artical delt with both cases equal. It goes to show that at least ONE paper can be fair and properly deal with what the important issue is, i.e, that of the abuse of cocaine in Ireland that has led to the death of these three people within one week, and the importance of cracking down on the drug before more people die from it.
  7. Countess's Avatar
    I think Americans are essentially voyeurs peering into the living rooms of famous people to see what they're doing. I don't know about the Irish - perhaps in my ignorance, I thought they would be different.
    I am torn by the same thing, but here is what I think: you heard about those deaths and they touched your heart, and your outrage over the inequality of treatment was heard here, where it will affect other people. This is the means by which the world truly changes, one person at a time, one day at a time. We are the real people behind the smoke and mirrors of the famous. Remember that.
  8. Niamh's Avatar
    Hear Hear Countess!!!