Over the past few hours, a report claiming the death of Roger Erhart, Delphine Wespiser’s partner, has been circulating online. At the time of writing, we have found no reliable source confirming his death. The most recent public information actually suggests the exact opposite: Roger is continuing his battle against the disease. On 18 September, Delphine Wespiser was still by his side as he was due to undergo his tenth chemotherapy session.
Roger Erhart is suffering from throat cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, a condition which Delphine Wespiser herself has spoken about publicly in recent months. In February, she explained that they had been fighting this battle for around a year and a half and affirmed their determination to win it.
This is precisely what makes this sort of false report particularly despicable. Fabricating the death of a public figure is already a deplorable excess of the click economy. To do so regarding someone who is actually battling a serious illness adds a level of cruelty whose purpose is hard to fathom, other than to rack up a few page views, a few shares or a few seconds of attention.
We all too easily forget that an online rumour does not remain confined to a screen. It can be read by friends, family, acquaintances – people who do not immediately realise it is a fabrication. For a few seconds or minutes, they may believe that a man they know has actually just died. That is the human cost of a misleading headline.
The internet has created a strange race: to be the first, to get clicks, to provoke a reaction before even asking whether a piece of information is true. For certain accounts and pages, death has become just another clickbait story. Deaths are announced prematurely, old articles are recycled, photographs are misused, and a hospital stay is turned into a deathbed struggle, whilst an illness is turned into a soap opera.
Yet there is a journalistic rule as simple as child’s play: one does not publish news of someone’s death without reliable confirmation. And when that person is fighting cancer, such caution should be an absolute given.
Roger Erhart does not need the internet to organise his imaginary funeral. He needs to fight his battle, surrounded by those who love him. Delphine Wespiser has chosen to make part of this ordeal public, in particular to talk about the illness and prevention. This choice does not turn their lives into a playground for rumour-mongers.
It is high time we collectively rediscovered a very simple truth: behind a celebrity, a name on Google or a photograph on Instagram, there is still a human being.
And announcing the death of a man who is fighting for his life is not news.
It is an affront.
