Terminally ill woman bikes across the USA and the media totally ignore her

[GCP]

Jane Tomlinson is dying from metastatic breast cancer and for the last 50 days has been biking across the US from San Francisco to NYC to try and raise money for cancer research. She has biked through the worst heat wave ever, over the Rockies and Appalachians, in pain and suffering, keeping going by will-power alone and the total result has been a complete ignoring of the whole thing by the US media.
It's depressing as hell that nobody covered this apart from the BBC web site.
If anybody has any media contacts, maybe at least her arrival in NYC (might ) get some coverage??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/articles/2006/06/30/jane_tomlinson_usa_20060630_feature.shtml

[liberal N proud]

1. But there was JonBenett story to be told to divert the people n/t

[Vidar]

2. You're right. Thanks for posting.

[rfranklin]

3. I think she was with Jon Benet when she died!

Perhaps that would get her some attention.

[bluerum]

4. She must be a democrat.

[WildClarySage]

5. No, if she was a dem, the press would be all over the story

of her detractors and swiftboaters who'd be claiming she isn't really all that sick and she probably doesn't even have cancer and nobody's ever really seen her on her bike anyway and look at how much the republicans have done for her and others with cancer.

[OnionPatch]

18. Boy do you have that right!

I remember how Granny D walked across the US. She was in her eighties and walked to bring attention to campaign reform. Did they cover that, either?

Our media is a sham.

[Iris]

6. An inspiring story

and a depressing reminder of how useless our media has become.

[OzarkDem]

7. Bless her

The GOP would rather cut breast cancer patients health care than cover her story.

Besides, it doesn't sound as though she's giving the money to Bush's Pioneer girlfriend, Nancy Brinker at the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Sympathy for breast cancer patients isn't useful unless its helping Bush via the Race for the Cure.

[malaise]

8. Tell her to have sex with a minor

or kill a few people. MSM has no time for dying or dead people. Just ask the soldiers in Iraq.

[dogday]

19. You know that was my thought too...

I thought that she would of gotten tons of coverage had she had sex with a minor on this biketrip..... Sad that we think that way, but it is so true... Those are the only stories that seem to hit the headlines......

[keith the dem]

9. I am so fed up with the F'en media

Not an inch goes to this story, but 10,000,000 articles about a guy who imagined he killed a little girl. Hordes of reporters that were too stupid to see that they had been had.

The decline of our country is assured if the free press is this stupid, if our law enforcement is this dumb, and we continue to elect mindless idiots.

Our future would be secure with people like this woman, who has the determination to fight on despite all the odds against her.

SHE NEEDS TO BE HEARD AND SEEN!!

[Kailassa]

10. So once again Americans have to look to overseas media

to learn what is going on in their own country.

I'd like to send everyone in control of the non-reporting media on a space-ship to nowhere.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

16. how true. how sad. and what a great story

But johnbenay is so much more impotent.

[City Lights]

11. I sent a smackdown email to MSNBC and NBC.

I'll try to hit CNN, CBS, and ABC later. Everyone should drop them a line on this.

[Vinca]

12. She'd be covered if she spotted Natalie Holloway. nt

[raccoon]

13. Well, she must not be a beautiful, young, wealthy white woman

:sarcasm:

[soup]

17. Ah, but she is.

All three.

beautiful, young, and wealthy

The first two of the three are obvious by seeing her picture - the third is her wealth of inner strength and determination providing bright inspiration to all who read her story.

How sad is it that this is the first I've heard of her journey?

Amazing woman.

k&r

[raccoon]

24. !!!! nt

[Julius Civitatus]

25. Well, she's a "foreigner"

Unfortunately, many Americans don't grant the same level of humanity to anyone born outside our borders. Many of these people do not care about anything outside of our realm, and believe the world revolve around the US.

I think this is a problem, and I've been saying it for a long, long time. I have lived in Europe and traveled to many other countries. One thing that saddens me about the average American "Joe six pack" is this wretched notion that Americans are somehow "blessed," "selected by some god," at a different level than the rest of their fellow human beings. It's a modern evolution of Manifest Destiny, where only America matters, and only Americans are "real people."

I'm not surprised that we have witnessed Abu Grahib and Guantanamo in recent years. I thin kit's another manifestation of that mentality, by which non-Americans can be tortured, beaten, raped and murdered with impunity since their status in the minds of the torturers is "less than human."

The MSM constantly reinforce this idea (cable news networks propagate this idea), by only focusing on American matters, exclusively touching foreign affairs when some American interest is at stake.

I think it's very sad.

[soup]

26. But, then again...

We all know Americans don't get breast cancer. So why should anyone pay attention?

soup <--- survivor since 1993


and Sadly, I agree with what you say. I'm not as well travelled, but firmly believe that any one person's life is worth just as much as mine. It's hard to understand a mindset that would think otherwise.

[GeorgeGist]

14. It's not All about US...

or Jesus so why would proud-to-be Americans care?

[Nightjock]

15. I work for a radio station in NY

We are contacting her today. Thank you so much for bringing this to everyones attention.
We're not a big station compared to others but every little bit helps.

[soup]

27. Good on ya, Nightjock.

She deserves so much more and so much better than she is getting.

Her fight for others in spite of what she is going through herself is beyond admirable.

Guess it's time to GET LOUD. Off to write some e-mails...

[mcscajun]

20. Here's the motivation for ignoring the story in a nutshell: She's British

not American.

Doesn't justify it one whit, but now we can see the "she's not one of ours, so who cares?" mentality in full view once again.

from the BBC Story:
This is the biggest endurance event done by someone with terminal cancer in the world so I can only presume that this complete disinterest is because Jane is British and as such there is a presumption that the US public would have no interest in a story which isn't one of their own. For me this is a huge disappointment; human effort on this scale whichever race, creed or nationality should be looked at impartially. What is surprising though is that without any access to media outlets 50% of the e-mails coming in are from Americans giving support.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/articles/2006/06/30/jane_tomlinson_usa_20060630_feature.shtml

[Julius Civitatus]

21. But Rockey Vaccarella went to see Chimpy, kissed his butt on national TV

and told him he wanted "four more years."

And the media gave full coverage to that Republican brown-nose for two straight days. That was wall-to-wall coverage, non-stop.

Some days I feel the American media exist exclusively to serve the interests of the GOP.

[spooky3]

22. Thank you for calling our attention to this!

[Jed Dilligan]

23. And I thought I was having a rough summer!

I wonder why the US media hasn't picked up her story. It seems like the kind of thing the public likes to read.

[sakabatou]

28. Now if she were blond, rich

and got herself kidnapped, then she might make it on the news.

[YOY]

29. She should have stopped and molested an underage beauty queen.

n/t

[Theres-a]

30. Kick for Jane!

[degreesofgray]

31. thanks for the link

perhaps to get some attention by our corporate media she needs to fire Tom Cruise, unplug Terri Schiavo, or murder a child beauty queen (or perhaps all three)

[peacebird]

32. Her ride ends in NYC 9:30 on Sept 1st.

She is amazing.

[peacebird]

33. cross post link about article I posted on Jane Tomlinson today

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2008920

thank you for the initial posting! Her story touched me so much that I had to do some research and post it up on a cycling website to give her some more coverage....
:hi:

[jbnow]

34. She should get a hold of Lance Armstrong

to ride with her for a while. Good chance he would. I know he has his own foundation but he does a lot to raise awareness, money and help for cancer research and patents.

That might get the media's attention and thus America's. What a gutsy thing to do with her time now. I hadn't heard about it before.