Today, News of the World led with an exclusive story revealing that former Atomic Kitten, jungle queen and longstanding celebrity car-crash Kerry Katona was addicted to cocaine.
The evidence? A video of the messed-up star snorting coke, splashed as still-frames in the pages of the red-top.
While I am in no way surprised that Katona is a coke fiend, I can see what the tabloid is suggesting; this woman has previously denied a drug problem and has marketed herself as a great mother. For a long time she was the face of Iceland (That’s why mums go to Iceland) and has even accepted an award for Mother of the Year. So yeah… the cocaine doesn’t look good in the mix. It’s controversial. I get it.
But here’s the problem: the video of Kerry snorting coke was obtained through a hidden camera in the ensuite leading off Katona’s bedroom in her own house. Someone planted a camera in her private bathroom. And while what she was doing is illegal, she did so in the privacy of her own home.
How would you feel if someone planted a camera in your bathroom… Trawled through footage of you on the toilet, in the shower… ?
It makes me sick to think that the media can intrude on people’s privacy to such an extent. Whatever happened to journalism as the fourth estate? I want to be protected from Big Brother, I don’t want to support the creation of a second one. If we support this kind of intrusion, we have no right to question the state’s encroachment on our privacy.
Max Mosley screws prostitutes in Nazi-themed orgies. Is he hurting anyone? No. These are consenting adults. No animals or children were harmed in the making of his sex-scandal video. So he’s got a dirty sexual fantasy. Are we the thought police? He’s not working on the rise of the next Third Reich.
Who are we to judge someone’s sexual tendencies? It’s a private matter. If all parties consent to engage in a private act, whose business is it but their own?
Is it our fault for making the media too comfortable in our homes? Did the celebrities invite this attention by whoring themselves before the cameras? Because they shamelessly sell themselves on ‘real-life’ documentaries, series where we see into their lives, does that mean they cut us a key?
I’m scared that we’re digging our own graves with this kind of voyerism. Who is in charge here? I don’t think we have a leg to stand on…
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