Posted on February 5, 2008 by Kathy McManus in All, Celebrity, Media Comments (8)
King’s Question
Stephen King is known for writing scary things.
When Time Magazine recently asked him who he would choose as Person of the Year, Mr. King wrote “Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.”
But rather than an endorsement of the two celebs—whose personal downfalls are relentlessly chronicled throughout the media—the full context of King’s nomination was an indictment of the media itself: “Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan symbolize the media’s growing obsession with issues of personality over substance. People care more about the details of Spears’ child custody case than they do about where the billions the U.S. government has poured into Iraq have gone. It’s time for a discussion about whether the news media have chucked their responsibilities and run off to Tabloid Disneyland.”
To be fair, there are still respectable hard-news outlets where you’d be hard-pressed to find any stories about attention-seeking, underwear-challenged, rehab-struggling, bold-face names.
At the same time, Business Week magazine notes that TV shows and blogs devoted specifically to celebrity scandal and gossip are increasing because of one key factor: there’s a growing audience for them. And a profitable one. "Cleaning Up By Dishing Dirt" —the Business Week headline says it all.
So let Stephen King’s discussion begin. Have the media chucked their responsibilities? Have readers and viewers of celebrity news chucked theirs, too?
Comments (8)
Skip comments
People without any lives of their own
Yes I do believe that the news and media have entirely become garbage news seekers but it is because people themselves have become garbage news scavengers mostly due to people nowadays not having a real life of their own. They live their lives as to how the media especially reality shows portray life. People now think it is normal to be involved in someone else’s life by voyeurism. They don’t physically get involved just visually. You can see how this is true when there is an accident on a 3 lane freeway when everyone has to literally stop to stare and see something. They aren’t doctors or paramedics just nosy and want visual stimulation. They never get out though to physically help. The media and the news are pretty much dishing out what the majority of people in this country want to see and excite themselves with this junk. Unfortunately the majority are simple minded and enjoy seeing others in dilemmas and they themselves don’t have hobbies,work-out, or even read good novels. It isn’t the media’s entire fault – it is ours, since we have the choice to not accept such garbage. Instead we have become a gutless society that doesn’t stand up for anything anymore nor challenge issues that are serious. We are more interested in if Britney has underwear on or not and this is sad.
Media gone too far
The media definitely does go too far covering celebrity lives. It must be difficult to live almost every day with such a constant bombardment. I’m not sure what it is, but people enjoy watching people who have all the money and success in the world just completely throw it away. For some reason, we enjoy watching failure and have become entertained by it. Why is that?
Dead on, Steve
The media is a business, of course, and they have to meet their own bottom line. While I respect that, I have no respect for the notion that the latest escapades of the Rich and Infamous is worthy of national attention. I cannot fathom why the misadventures of overpaid youth living to excess should be considered of equal importance as the national economy, the status of the political system or anything in which our military in involved(good or ill).
yes steve!
This begs the question which came first, peoples’ thirst for tabloid trash or the tabloid trash? They both feed off of each other. I’m personally sickened by what I see in the check out line at the store. You can’t get away from it. Even the media outlets I used to respect have gotten in on it! The sad fact is TRASH sells in this country. The responsibility for the steady moral decline of our nation lies with both the people who read this garbage and the publishers. It’s sad to me to see so many kids in this country immitating what they see celebrities do. They think it’s cool. I think the media goes way to far in their reporting of celebrities, but they only report on what they know the public wants! This will not change untill society does.
Give a thief a penny, he'll take a pound
Somewhere I heard this saying many years ago. Maybe it was my upbringing in New England. Who knows, but it stuck with me and it’s strange that I would remember it now. It goes: Give a thief a penny, he’ll take a pound. The tabliod trash that is being dumped on us on a daily basis is on the same concept. The more we pay attention, the more they feed us. If we didn’t pay attention to it, it would have no purpose in our lives. I am one of those of rare birds that doesn’t read the crap in the grocery checkout line. I turn the channel on my TV when this garbage comes on. I don’t watch much TV anyway. This is how it should be. When did we, as a society, start being so concerned with what is happening in the dail life of the rich and infamous?! WHY are we so interested? What is the big deal?! They are people just like we are, yet we idolize them just because they have money and are on our TV’s and movie screens!! OOOOH! BIG DEAL! Who really cares! They are no more special than the couple down the street with 5 starving children, or the Grandmother who sits alone in a nursing home because her family doesn’t care enough to visit her. Why is it that people cannot show the same care and concern for those who NEED to have the attention?! No wonder we have so many selfish, rude and arrogant people running around this messed up world these days! Get a grip on reality people and give attention where attention is deserved!
Yeah, but...
I agree largely with the comments people have made, but I have another I’d like to respectfully offer up.
We live in a capitalist society and our demand has slowly merged the news industry with the entertainment industry. In truth, this isn’t really unique in history, but the point is now we’re aware of it and we pay for it.
When people are offended by something they see in the news, they tend to have no trouble finding their voices in protest. But there is no protest for the offensive nature of the news in general. Let’s face it, the people who run news programs don’t choose their stories based on what interests them. Has it occurred to anyone how little commentary there would be on Paris Hilton or Britney Spears were it not for people complaining about how people eat it up? Why are there no protests about this content on our news programs? Why, in fact, do we reward it with higher ratings?
I think a portion of the responsibility lies with us. We can either protest and try to change the content or basically shut up and admit it’s what we want.
Untitled
There is a sense dichotomy to this issue, the people who protest these individuals and the ‘garbage’ that is on TV. They help create the standards by which the studios gauge public images. The rest of the public fawn over these celebrities because they break away from that exact image. In other words we create the image and standards that we want these celebrities to break. As for a solution, there isn’t one. for every person that says turn that off, two more say turn it up.
Seeing King's side
I have to agree with King on this. We are inundated with fluff information. But here’s the catch. We get snippets of news first thing in the morning and just before we go to bed. This is when we are the most exhausted. Local papers stick to just that, mostly local information and just skim on world and political news.
Here’s the rub, if someone is really interested in what is going on, they have to dig for it.
I recently read an article published by the New York Times accusing the current government of planting the military experts on network news programs. I was appalled. This article on the other hand was sent to me by a senator a few months after the fact. What astonished me the most is that in the little time most of us have to see or read the news, I would have thought an accusation like that would have been everywhere, something we couldn’t get away from.
So, whose fault is it? The media’s for burying information underneath the fluff or ours for not digging for it?