Celebrity News Craze: In China, Celebrities will air out 'dirty laundry'

Saturday, May 10, 2008

In China, Celebrities will air out 'dirty laundry'

"Access Hollywood" Exports Celebrity News Craze to China.

There's money to be made in China from the American style celebrity-driven news cycle. Last year, the owners of Access Hollywood signed a deal to refashion the celebrity "news" program for Chinese sensibilities.

" NBCs international arm has licensed a Mandarin-language version of its 11-years and running popular Access Hollywood program to China....

" 'The fact that Access Hollywood is being produced in Beijing with a Chinese host, and the majority of the content is shot in China, is a testament to how well this format adapts culturally,' said an NBC VP. "

The arrival of Access Hollywood is a bad sign for the promise of a free press in China. Instead of focusing on environmental problems, human rights abuses, the heavy-handed government, and other civic concerns, consumers of Chinese media will be fed news of the latest Chinese celebrity sex scandal.

Sadly, we've seen what this kind of journalistic distraction has wrought on America.

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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.