What happened after CNN invited author Jake Halpern to discuss “Fame Junkies,” his book on America’s deleterious obsession with celebrity? Halpern tells the story in today’s Wall Street Journal:
[I]t was certainly a delightful irony when, upon my arrival, I was told that my segment had been canceled due to breaking news. “Oh,” I said, “What happened?” The technician replied, “Didn’t you hear, Britney Spears just lost custody of her kids?”
Halpern goes on to lay out some familiar sounding, but nonetheless disheartening, statistics: in 2004, network news gave five times more coverage to Martha Stewart than Darfur; on the day he was bumped, CNN’s Britney to Iraq coverage ratio was three to one.
Enough already. While networks may get ratings spikes by flooding the Britney zone, as Curtis wrote last month, producers and reporters must inform and educate on issues of public relevance, especially since the public’s interests tend to follow news coverage. It’s time to remember that we viewers are not just consumers. We’re citizens.
Not to mention we're sick of hearing about them. Perhaps I don't speak for everyone but I personally would be just fine if I never heard another tidbit about Brittany, Paris or Lindsey.
"The only thing worse than people talking about you is people not talking about you." - Oscar Wilde
Posted by AhmNee
on Thu 4 Oct 2007 at 03:33 PM
I know network news would draw more attention from a sophisticated audience if it didn't pander to the Jerry Springer audience. The idea behind media content is to lure the uneducated and gullible, because this increases the value of advertising space.
Uneducated people are more susceptible to advertising, and respond to sensationalistic media content with consumption. The more women see other women who look more attractive than they do, the more they buy at the grocery store.
This is an evolutionary artifact, refined through natural selection: A woman who perceives her husband might fall in love with another woman, because she is more beautiful will eat as much as she can to gain fat, so she can survive long enough without a man providing for her to find another man to support her.
This is why female CNN news anchors look like candy coated gumdrops: To induce women to buy cosmetics and food.
The goal of every media outlet is to psychologically drive viewers to consume advertisers' products and services. Depictions of sin are the most effective, while stories about sinful behavior on the news have an air of legitimacy, they drive consumption just as well.
The days of Truth are over. The news is almost fictional. The lives of celebrities are fictional in terms of how much money they are paid for the work they do. People find it easier to pity someone who is wealthy, attractive, and successful than someone who is truly in need. Television is also very safe, because television viewers never need to say anything, or use any skill, they just blindly suck in the slime oozing out of the TV set, and de-evolve into purely instinctual beings that do nothing but watch TV, and use their credit cards as revolving credit accounts, paying the minimum payment, of course.
Posted by MasonCide
on Fri 5 Oct 2007 at 10:26 PM