Celebrity News Craze: The Future of Journalism

Saturday, May 10, 2008

The Future of Journalism

In an opinion piece, the writer Amanda Cole expressed her continuing shock about the celebrity news craze. In "Britney Spears does not qualify as actual news," Ms. Cole wrote that, "It used to be the case that these supposedly formal news media sources, like The New York Times and CNN, would cover serious and important stories, and that celebrity gossip news was limited to being written about in celebrity gossip magazines."

Less than a year after Chris Crocker posted his infamous defense of Britney Spears on YouTube, journalists, who you would think would know better (at least by now), are still moving in what the writer and critic Aphrodite Jones described as the media's "pack mentality."

The rise of the celebrity news craze is now even bemoaned by celebrity news writers, because the niche has become over-crowded, so much so that we are having to invent new celebrities about whom to dish.

Ms. Cole, in her editorial in The Tartan, added:

"Serious news sources need to be just that — serious. Celebrity news should be pushed back to the entertainment section instead of dominating the front page, or simply left out of the publication altogether. The future of journalism looks bleak if this is where news is headed."

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Media Bias in the United States

According to Wikipedia, this is how we can think of media bias:

Media bias in the United States is the description of systematically non-uniform selection or coverage of news stories in the United States media. Claims of bias in the media include claims of liberal bias, conservative bias, claims of mainstream bias, and claims of corporate bias. There are a variety of watchdog groups that attempt to find the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias, and research about media bias is a subject of systematic scholarship in a variety of disciplines.

What can independent website publishers and bloggers do that the mainstream media can't?

In an interesting blog post on Daily Kos, a blogger acknowledges the sensibility that is emerging about critics of the mainstream media: that there is a valid role for bloggers and independent website publishers in reporting the news.

This blog will aim to add to that conversation from the perspective of other bloggers and independent website publishers.

Where I'm starting out is from the perspective of society's and the media's shared obession with celebrities. How does this focus on celebrities blur our concentration of other subjects?

Disclosures

I am a registered Democrat, and I have long had an interest in the media.

I've read a lot about a bias in the media lately revolving around the U.S. Democratic Party's primary campaign. But even before this, I was lucky to have worked for the journalist Aphrodite Jones, who wrote a book about media bias. Although I will rely on that book to give some context to this blog, I hope the scope of this blog can encompass a larger conversation about fairness and accuracy in the media.

Thank you for visiting Celebrity Media Craze.