Kate Middleton has shared a personal update on her cancer battle and confirmed that her preventative chemotherapy has now ended. In a video message posted on Monday, 9 September, the Princess of Wales addressed her recovery and said her focus is staying 'cancer free', but will be taking 'each day as it comes'.
The 42 year old, who announced in March that she had been diagnosed with cancer, spoke about her experience in the video and said her family had been 'blown away' by supportive messages. While she outlined that the last nine months had been 'incredibly tough' she confirmed that her preventative chemotherapy had now finished.
In the deeply personal video message, Kate said: "As the summer comes to an end, I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment.
Audio visual:
At OK! I jumped on this story as breaking news after the Princess of Wales posted the video message on the official Prince and Princess of Wales Instagram account. The royal content for OK! does incredibly well, in particular Kate Middleton, and especially because this story was a health update following her cancer diagnosis earlier this year. It was incredible important that I wrote this as soon as possible to allow us to be one of the first publications to break the news.
We were able to use screenshots of the video after the photo team checked for the legal rights, which were approved. We were also able to use direct quotes from the video, which I reported correctly in this story. We were also able to include the video in our story, after it was confirmed that we had the rights to use it, and the video quickly went viral.
As the video was shared directly on the Prince and Princess of Wales Instagram account, we did not have to approach their representatives for a comment or state that it was speculation, as Kate confirmed it in her own words in the video.
It was vital that we did not write that Kate had ‘beaten cancer’ or that she was ‘cancer free’, due to legal guidance provided to us, so instead confirmed that she had finished preventative chemotherapy.
Audience engagement:
The video went viral on the Prince and Princess of Wales Instagram account, being shared across numerous social media platforms and publications. Therefore when it came to reporting the story for OK! using the video in our coverage was vital so our readers could watch it directly with us and so we could benefit from the engagement.
It was a breaking news story for OK! and gained over 21K page views on the website. We then pushed the story on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok which gained a huge amount of engagement. While it wasn't our original video it still worked incredibly well on our social media platforms and allowed our audience to comment, share and like the video, as well as our article further.
Sharing the video on the OK! Instagram account, it received an incredible 224K likes, 4,828 comments and 1,708 shares.
The video was also posted on the OK! TikTok account which gained 68.8K likes, 2,256 comments and 4,732 shares.
On Facebook the breaking story received 2K reactions, 161 comments and 88 shares.