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Emma Keller Admits Quoting Cancer Patient Lisa Adams’ Private E-mails, Guardian Unpublishes

The Guardian unpublished an article by Emma Keller, wife of former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, about cancer patient Lisa Adams that questioned “the ethics of tweeting terminal illness.”  Adams tweets about her cancer treatment and her Twitter bio says she is “living w/ stage 4 breast cancer.”

The Jan. 8 post has been replaced with a brief note from The Guardian that explains: “This post has been deleted with the agreement of the subject because it is inconsistent with the Guardian editorial code.” iMediaEthics wrote to The Guardian asking for a fuller explanation. A Guardian spokesperson told us by e-mail:

“Following an investigation by the Guardian‘s independent readers’ editor, we have removed the article in question from our website because it is inconsistent with the Guardian editorial code. This decision was taken with the agreement of Lisa Adams.”

Keller’s post was headlined:

“Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? Lisa Adams is dying of breast cancer. She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her journey. Is this educational or too much?”

Keller’s post asked “Is there such a thing as TMI?”   The post read in part, according to Gawker which published an excerpt last week:

“Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed? …”

Adams tweeted in response to the post.

 

The New York Times has since published a correction that reads:

“Correction: January 13, 2014

“An earlier version of this column misstated the number of Lisa Adams’s children. It is three, not two.”

She then tweeted about Keller’s comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more, check out Adams’ Twitter feed.

 

UPDATE: More on this story:

 

Guardian may re-publish Emma Keller post on Lisa Adams

No Apologies, NYT ‘readers misread my point,’ says Bill Keller RE his Adams Cancer column