Mindless Celebrity News Can Be Damaging

The sight of Paris Hilton going to jail created a frenzy of news media coverage for two full days. Hilton was the number three story on cable TV. It was the eighth most heavily covered story on network TV news. However, this celebrity faux news did not make the top ten stories covered in American newspapers. There was similar television media coverage after the death of Anna Nicole Smith. For days nearly half of cable news coverage was devoted to her story, making it by far the most heavily covered story for a week on cable.

The media creates and distributes celebrity faux news because it can be packaged to appear to be sensational. It involves a celebrity that we know and therefore it appears to touch us in a personal way. For the television media it means ratings at a bargain basement price. The panel discussions, the speculation, and the experts are cheap. The same issue can appear on a cable channel all day or all week.

What does the American public think of all this celebrity faux news? The Pew Research Center for People and the Press completed a new national survey in July 2007. Here are its findings: "An overwhelming majority of the public (87%) says celebrity scandals receive too much news coverage. This criticism generally holds across most major demographic and political groups. Virtually no one thinks there is too little coverage of celebrity scandals."

This media obsession with the faux news of the sometimes troubled personal lives of celebrities is taking media attention and focus away from important national and international news stories and events in 2007. It is contributing to the "dumbing down" of American society. Indeed, it is very disturbing that we have heard little from the American media about the heroic story of Aung San Suu Kyi, even with the recent worldwide attention given to the sad events in Burma (Myanmar). However, we have heard far too much about the personal problems and issues of our celebrities. It is the substantive news that we could know, and doesn't, that should concern us. This media age of latest celebrity news comes at the expense of real news, and poses a danger to a free and literate society.