Marcy Franklin
One typical morning, I
flipped the channel to CNN to catch up on my current events. I saw
uninterrupted coverage with serious anchors and reporters giving the grave news
that someone had died. My first instinct told me that it was someone who
carried a lot of importance in society – perhaps a politician, humanitarian, or
celebrity. Sure enough, in due time I learned that it was Anna Nicole Smith.
She was just a girl famous for being famous, a Playboy bunny, who frequently
graced the cover of tabloids for her less-than-flattering antics. I then
checked my local newspapers’ websites, and saw more disturbing news: Britney
Spears had shaved her head. And from there it was a downhill slide. I had to
learn more about how Anna died, why Britney shaved her head, why an acclaimed
NASA astronaut wore diapers to drive 900 miles to harass her competition to
another’s astronaut heart… But why did I even care? Why was it so important for
me to know who Anna’s baby’s father was, when I certainly wasn’t a fan of hers
before her death? It didn’t seem all that important to me, and yet I couldn’t
stop reading these stories.
It is a
question that must be asked in our celebrity culture: why do we care? What
possesses us to keep up on our celebrity news? It comes as no surprise that our
society is obsessed, mesmerized with fame. We want to be near it, we want to
have it as our own. Jake Halpern, the author of Fame Junkies: The Hidden
Truths Behind America’s Addiction, noted a survey given to 635 middle
school students in Rochester,
Appalling as the results
may be, who are we to blame? The finger points in the direction of the media.
During the Anna Nicole Smith saga, the mainstream media outlets neglected to inform
the public that Al Qaeda had been building operatives in
As a journalism major, I
have been faithfully taught that the purpose of journalism is to inform
citizens so that we can be a free and self-governing society. It seems so
simple and clear to us in theory, but it is harder to act on those purposes.
When I see the overwhelming amount of celebrity coverage in the media, it makes
me question whether the media is fulfilling its journalistic purpose. It is the
role, the responsibility, of the media to give us the information that citizens
need to be self-governing. It is essential that the media give us the news that
helps our democracy to be self-governing, yet it is clear that celebrity news
is hindering our society’s ability to be independent and free.
Many will argue that
there is nothing inherently wrong about celebrity news, especially in the form
of tabloid journalism. Henrik Ornebring, of the University of Leicester in the
UK, and Anna Maria Jonnson, of the Goteburg University and Sodertom University
College of Sweden, argue that tabloid journalism is not simply another synonym
for “bad” journalism. The authors stress that the mainstream media creates a
need for an alternative media to present different issues. The problem, these
professors argue, is that these alternative media outlets, especially tabloids,
are labeled deterrents to serving the public interest. The authors write,
Lay
(and sometimes academic) criticism of journalism continues to be based around
simply binary oppositions, where emotional is bad and rational-intellectual is
good, sensation is contrasted with contextualisation and tabloid journalism is
charged with meeting complexity with dumbing down. But emotionalism, sensation and
simplification are not necessarily
opposed to serving the public good (Ornebring and Jonsson, 284).
As the authors mention later, tabloid journalism throughout
history has attracted a new public by discussing issues that have been ignored in
the mainstream media, therefore better serving the public interest (Ornebring
and Jonsson, 287). Celebrity news has a similar effect on the public; celebrity
gossip media outlets, like the E! Channel or People magazine bring in audiences looking for celebrity gossip
that is not found in mainstream media.
Furthermore, some argue that interest in
celebrities, or as psychology professionals define it, “celebrity worship,” is
not necessarily a bad thing. According to a psychological study, low levels of
celebrity worship correlate with high levels of extraversion in people.
Psychology researchers John Maltby, Liza Day, Lynn E. McCutcheon, Raphael
Gillett, James Houran, and Diane D. Ashe write, “Celebrity worshippers who do
so for entertainment-social reasons are extraverted, seek information and
support, and are able to display emotions” (423). These characteristics defend
the purpose behind celebrity news. Bonnie Fuller, the chief editorial director
for American Media Inc., the tabloid conglomerate that publishes the Star, the National Enquirer, and the Globe,
said,
What’s going on is that we
all have fewer people in common. When you’re in high school, or at a small
college, you know everybody’s business and you can follow their romantic
goings-on and discuss them with your friends. But when you grow up and you’re
out in the work world, you don’t have that. So celebrities give us a whole
world of people in common – people to gossip about at work over the water
cooler or at a dinner party (Halpern, 147).
Celebrity
news then serves to bring people together socially and give people an escape
from mainstream media. Fuller’s argument then seems to justify the validity of
celebrity news. However, it should be noted that Fuller’s career depends on the
validity of celebrity news.
This is not a paper
criticizing people’s desire to learn about celebrities. However, I believe that
the argument that celebrity news is valid within the mainstream media contains
loopholes too big to ignore. I will concede that celebrity news is not a bad
thing when it is contained to alternative media outlets like the E! channel or People magazine. These media outlets are
no different than any other specialized media, for example, a sports channel or
a sports magazine. This is because they cater to the audience’s interests, and
indeed, there is a very large audience that is interested in celebrities. But
when celebrity news crowds out other news on mainstream media outlets, then it
becomes a problem. It has changed what news agencies are pursuing as news. Sue
Cross, the Vice President /West of the
Associated Press, reported that the news wire service now gets requests from as
far away as
The Anna Nicole saga may
be the most recent prime example. The amount of airtime, page space, and
resources dedicated to following the drama was overwhelming in comparison to
the coverage of other news stories. Nick Madigan of the Baltimore Sun reported in his editorial that according the Project
for Excellence in Journalism, the Smith story was the number one story on cable
television for a week, and that it took up half the news airtime in the first
two days after her death. (Madigan, para. 21) In addition, the major mainstream
media outlets spent more time dedicated to Smith’s story than a developing
story about the haphazard conditions and substandard care for wounded soldiers
at the
This is not to say that
Anna Nicole’s death has no worth as a breaking news story. But a mention on
mainstream media outlets would certainly have sufficed; there are numerous
celebrity news outlets to cover her death. Continuing with the arguments of
Ornebring and Jonsson, if the mainstream media have created alternative media
outlets, then celebrity news should be kept to those outlets. If people wish to
learn about their favorite celebrities, then by all means, they have an
abundant number of outlets to choose from. Celebrity news has no place in the
mainstream media; there are more than plenty of alternative media outlets to
cover celebrities.
However, many argue that
celebrity news is needed for the news industry to survive. Another argument in
favor of celebrity journalism in mainstream media is that the media industry
needs celebrity news to boost its ratings or circulation numbers. Undoubtedly,
mediums such as newspapers are losing readers rapidly. But while circulation
numbers and ratings are decreasing, the “infotainment” industry is booming. People, Us Weekly, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly magazines saw an
increase of 18.7 percent in circulation; news magazines like Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker and The Atlantic saw an increase of 2
percent (Halpern xv). As a result, mainstream media outlets are hopping on the
tabloid bandwagon. Jay T. Harris, a former editor of a big city tabloid and the
Wallis Annenberg Chair in the Annenberg School of Communication at USC,
acknowledged the advantages sensational celebrity news has for journalists. In
his opinion, it is undeniable that celebrity coverage sells. In an article for
the conference “Reporting on Celebrities: The Ethics of News Coverage,” he
wrote,
I
guess journalists could argue that celebrity coverage is smart business.
Further, I will stipulate that, by extension, competitive pressures provide a
plausible justification for celebrity coverage — if I don't do it my
competitor will and that will be to my disadvantage (Harris, para. 6).
If the media believes that celebrity news can rescue them
from dismal numbers, then they will certainly keep giving their audiences more
sensational news. There is, however, a problem with this rationale. Because
celebrity news is able to raise circulation and ratings numbers, this leads to
the belief that people must want more coverage of celebrities rather than real
news stories.
Although the
media seems to believe that their audiences want more celebrity news, it is not
necessarily true. The world’s largest news agency, the Associated Press,
decided in February of 2007 to suspend temporarily its coverage of the famous
heiress, Paris Hilton. Editors wanted to see the results if they didn’t publish
any stories about Hilton (Madigan, para. 3). At about the same time, on February
9, 2007 Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC’s Nightly News, posted on his web
log, the Daily Nightly, “Viewer warning: There will be no mention of Britney
Spears' baldness or rehab in tonight's broadcast, nor will there be any mention
of Anna Nicole's 'body possession' hearing" (Deggans, para. 2). He said
later,
I wrote it on a whim… I
realized I was watching three cable news networks doing some combination (of
stories) on a bald singer leaving rehab for a second time and a dead former
Playmate whose body is being argued over. I've got a world to cover . . . (and)
if I thought for a moment that Nightly News was somehow depriving a yearning
nation of these twin tragedies, I would rethink that decision (Deggans, para.
4).
Now, was there uproar over Williams’ decision to
not give time to Britney and Paris? Were news agencies clamoring for more
It's not as if there aren't other news outlets for those viewers
dissatisfied with our
treatment
of the story and the end of a tragic life. People watch our broadcast
presumably because they trust our reporting and our people, and because they
agree with our editorial take on the day more often than not. The great thing
about this era of media choice is that all those who find our broadcast lacking
in any way are free to go to any number of Web sites where they can find video
showing a cat flushing a toilet, or the explosive properties of Diet Coke and
Mentos when mixed together (Williams, para. 2).
However, Williams did receive some criticism for not covering
Smith. Wrote Eric Deggans in an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times, a respected journalist like Williams could
have provided an insightful look into Smith’s story rather than the mindless
coverage on every cable channel (Deggans, para. 7). But Williams recognized
that people do not want as much celebrity news as the media believe.
In fact, the
study by Patterson found that audiences actually preferred issue stories rather than soft news stories, celebrity
news included. The study, which looked at over 5,000 stories from the Lexus
Nexus database of two television networks, three prominent newspapers, and 26
local dailies, found that the foundation of news audiences are those who read
hard news stories (Valencia, para. 12). People look to the mainstream media
outlets to get the news, not to be informed of the latest celebrity happenings.
Furthermore,
some argue that using the “infotainment” strategy actually hurts rather than
helps news organizations in the end. Media scholars Bill Kovach and Tom
Rosenstiel argue that when news turns into entertainment, news organizations
must compete with media other than their own, a competition that they cannot
win (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 154). “Infotainment” also creates audiences that
are not reliable in terms of ratings and circulation numbers. Kovach and
Rosenstiel write,
The strategy of
infotainment, though it may attract an audience in the short run and may be
cheap to produce, will build a shallow audience because it is built on form,
not substance. Such an audience will switch to the next “most exciting” thing
because it was built on the spongy ground of excitement in the first place
(155).
The media’s argument that validates celebrity news’ worth in
the mainstream media is therefore faulty. Celebrity news doesn’t just hurt the
audiences, but it hurts news organizations as well. In a time where the news
industry is struggling to survive, news organizations should be wary of the
dangers that celebrity news has.
Therefore, celebrity news
is a viable threat to both our media and our democracy. According to Kovach and
Rosenstiel, the primary purpose of journalism is “to provide citizens with the
information they need to be free and self-governing” (Kovach and Rosenstiel,
17). The media have a responsibility to citizens to inform the public, or
democracy suffers. Jay T. Harris, a former editor of a big city tabloid and the
Wallis Annenberg Chair in the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, sees
the possible damage that celebrity news has for the future of our society. He
said,
We
[journalists] are the essential plumbing — we carry useful information,
including information on changing values, priorities, and shared challenges.
But we also carry (or maybe spread is the better word here) that which weakens,
that which corrodes, that which debases (Harris, para. 9).
Additionally, actor Ed Asner, at the “Reporting on
Celebrities: The Ethics of News Coverage” conference, called out celebrity news
for contributing to the “moral decay” of the country (Merina, para. 39). It’s
ironic that such harsh criticism of the journalism field comes from an actor,
who is one of the many players in the crisis of celebrity news.
So then,
what are the consequences of celebrity news? Why is it so damaging to our
democracy? We can look to the theory of agenda-setting to explain the possible
effects of too much celebrity news. According to the book Questioning the
Media: A Critical Introduction, the news media has the power to define what
is news, and what is not. Therefore, whatever the news media gives the most
prominence to, we consider to be news and important. The definition reads,
“News media power is based not so much on how the media interpret events to us
as it is on the sheer fact that they can set our agenda of things to think
about in the first place” (Downing et al., 478). Thus, if mainstream media is emphasizing
celebrity news over important news stories, then we are more likely to think
about celebrities rather than the issues that are pertinent to our democracy.
The consequences of this are huge. Suppose that all we cared about is Anna
Nicole’s baby, or Britney’s meltdown rather than the issues that make a
difference in our lives. How can a democracy possibly survive on paparazzi
photographs and celebrity relationships without the information it needs to be
self-governing? It cannot. Famed journalist Edward R. Murrow put it wisely in
1958, to the Radio-Television News Directors Association Convention, “For
surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication
[television] to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities
which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally”
(Murrow, para. 5). Journalists cannot insulate citizens with celebrity gossip,
for it will be detrimental to society.
In all of my research, I
found that no one in the journalism field was eager to take sides on the issue.
Although many were quick to gripe about the huge amount of celebrity news that
appears in mainstream media, they also recognize that without it, news media
would not survive. Although many see celebrity news as demeaning to their work,
they also realize that many people want it. So then, what are mainstream media
to do? Do they cater to profits and market demands or by what they believe to
be right? Do they give citizens more celebrity news, or the news that they see
as important? Who, then, decides what news is important and what news audiences
need? They are questions with no easy answers. But it distresses me greatly to
see that my work in the future, the field and career that I am committed to,
may be diminished to following trails of the latest celebrity gossip. I
certainly didn’t become interested in the field of journalism because I wanted
to follow rumors of Britney Spears’ antics. I became passionate about
journalism because I believed that the stories that I would write would make a
difference in my democracy, in my society. Do stories about Britney Spears
indeed help the citizens and make a difference? For entertainment purposes,
maybe, but I would have to argue they do not help citizens. I will continue to believe, with perhaps a
bit of blind optimism, that the purpose of journalism is not to simply give
audiences fluff, information that they do not need. I will believe that the
purpose of journalism still is, and always will be, to provide the citizens
with information that our democracy needs to function. Therefore, I urge the
entire mainstream media to retrace its steps back to the roots and principles
of journalism. I challenge the industry to think outside the market demands,
the world of ratings and circulation numbers, and to once again consider the
audience and what it needs. As Kovach and Rosenstiel worded it so eloquently,
journalism’s first loyalty is to the citizens, and its first obligation is to
provide those citizens with the information they need (p. 13). Celebrity news
in the mainstream media is hindering our news industry from fulfilling its
journalistic duties, and in turn hurting the citizens of our democracy.
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