tragedy

Last Saturday I was up early and off out shopping. Got home around 4pm, pottered about the house for a bit then sat down and put the laptop on.
Top of my facebook newsfeed "RIP Amy Winehouse".
So I put Sky News on.
Since I just wanted to catch up on events but was also checking mail and things online I left it on in the background for a couple of hours.

Very sad, another talented young person dead, and of course I feel for those who knew and loved her.
But the day before 90+ innocent people lost their lives in Norway, and some deranged and disturbed individual pushed the destruct button for them, Amy did it for herself.

And yet she was getting more coverage then the Norwegians.

Sky news kept replaying an interview with her father in which he had spoken of his fears that she would end up dead, and yet they were also saying that they weren't sure if he had even heard about her death as he was believed to be in America.
What ?
How very inappropriate. Here you are broadcasting all about the events as you see them, endless conjecture about her drug and alcohol problems, repeated footage of an interview, various non-entities giving their opinions on the phone, and yet you're not sure if all of her closest relatives are aware.
Imagine if you lost a child, well no don't it's too awful to even imagine, but what if you heard about it via the television ?
Whatever happened to the days when a tragic death might be spoken about on the news but the name would not be given until "all relatives have been informed".

In the wake of the Murdoch / News of The World phone hacking scandal I would've thought all aspects of the British media would want to be very careful about crossing lines at the moment.

I suppose when anything happens to a person who lives their life in the public eye it's very hard to keep it quiet but this was all over the news very soon after she was found, and by the time I put the TV on fans and the media were camped outside her house.
Makes me think someone made a call to the press.
And it seemed to me that on my TV we were getting about 5 minutes out of every 30 about Norway. It was that that I wanted to know more about since I had not seen much news the day before.
But no, Sky obviously thought that yesterdays news was just that.

I understand that Amy's death is closer to home then the events in Norway, and that some people may feel as if they know her whereas those who died abroad are strangers, but I doubt whether anyone who followed the story of her life could say they were really that surprised at what happened.
Given that it's been three years since she last released any music and her few public performances were only noted for the state she was in, would she really still be quite so famous without the drug binges, failed relationships and public displays of messiness. She certainly wouldn't have been in the tabloids and gossip magazines without it.
Her story the last few years has just been a car crash carried out under the glare of publicity.

However nobody could've predicted the massacre in Norway - the whole country must be in a state of absolute shock. And since the media is largely responsible for relaying what happens in the rest of the world shouldn't they be getting some perspective on the coverage they give ?

It's quite clear that all the people close to Amy had tried to help her overcome her problems. But the only person who can really stop addiction is the addict themselves. You can offer help and intervention but unless the addict wants it you're wasting your time.
I guess fame, fortune and money don't make you happy.
In fact they probably just made it a whole lot easier for Amy to get what she thought she needed.

But this isn't a story about some tragic abused homeless lost soul who turned to drugs to escape the horrors of her life, she was perhaps unlucky in love but this is a person who pretty much had it all.
She might've made some bad decisions and choices, but SHE made them.

What choice did the young people who died on that Norwegian island have ?

RIP.
Every person who died too soon these last few days.