Useless News - Who's to Blame?

Recently, there's been a ton of shit in the news about Tiger Woods and his alleged affairs. Very riveting, right? It has to be, because that seems to be all the news people want to talk about. It's not like anything else is happening, right? I mean, sure, there's government stuff and international news, but that shit's nowhere near as interesting as some message from Tiger Woods left on a bimbo's cell phone. Right?

The media constantly talks about celebrities and their problems, ignoring big issues. Why is this? My question this time is rather simple:

Who is to blame for the useless news reports? The media, for covering the pointless stories instead of important things? Or the viewers, for watching and reading the stupid stories?

It's easy to place the blame on the media. After all, they are the ones who refuse to shut up about celebrity mishaps and bad hair days and the like. But news channels and shows and magazines rely on money to survive, so they have to go with what will be popular. It seems like stories about celebrities are a lot more popular than stories about Congress. People would rather hear about what the President ordered for lunch than what he did for the country all day.

A perfect example of this comes in the form of Sarah Palin. Her political views weren't very popular, but when she left her office in Alaska, suddenly, no one wanted to shut up about her. She even released a book that talked about her life more than her political views. She's a politician who's famous for her life, excluding politics.

Who do we get mad at? The magazine that talks about how fat Jennifer Simpson is, or the person that buys the magazine instead of something that covers actual news?

Why the fuck would the motivation be for news to report celebrity news so frequently if it wasn't receiving the highest ratings?

If you want to stop seeing celebrity news, stop watching it.

There is no such thing as useless news.

While I think the private lives of private citizens is private, the fact is _someone_ out there might be interested, for their own reasons. Thus, it isn't "useless news". In fact, all news given by networks is there so that people will watch said network. If such news attracts viewers, then it has served its purpose.

News stations dont care about news, they, like all human beings, care about money. They will broadcast anything as "news" if they get more money. Also, what is news? If im a director in holleywood looking for a new star, and i get wind of them on the "news", that would be good news for me. Stupid news for you, mabe, but news is all from prospective. To be more specific, all from a rich man's perspective.

I asked Fpod about this the other day. He did mention that he was the first 'African American' to achieve what he did, and that he was a huge role model. Which... isn't something I care all too much about.

They did this with the Swine Flu too, there was an 'epidemic', and then when there was a shortage of the vaccination, they hardly talked about it as to not cause attention to it. Then when they had more vaccinations they started up again.

I don't remember there "African American" comment but, he was held up as a role model for children and yet he had several affairs.

As for the actual topic I'll psuedo-quote a radio personality when he spoke of this matter a few weeks ago (again, this is just the gist, not the exact quote."

"The reason people care about celebrities is because the government has taken responsibilities off of their shoulders. Now they have the time to waste watching that crap."

I say leave this stuff to the tabloids and keep the major channels like CNN, NBC, Fox and the like on the actual news of the world. I also want to keep the news channels from ever getting friendly with politicians or political groups at all.

rofl, you actually believe that??

I think it's much simpler than that: People are intrinsically interested in celebrities (For whatever reason; most likely interest in social figures who are focused on until they become a cultural icon), the media shows what people are interested in. More interest is created by the media displaying what people are interested in and a loop develops.

I didn't quote the African American to be rude, I quoted that for myself since he isn't fully black. ;p

I don't believe it in the way the guy said it. I see it as people have their priorities backwards. Which celebrity is fighting/fucking/starring in a movie with who isn't really all that important. No more important than who your neighbor is fighting/fucking/going out to eat with.

I would rather hear about Sarah Palin than the fighting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been having according to the tabliods. Why? because Palin has more influence on the country's voting patterns than those two combined. Hell, I would rather hear about Barney Frank than Tiger Woods for that matter and I'm not overly fond of Mr. Frank.

Part of the media's excuse is "we're giving people what they want", but there's only a few large media companies left in the US. That means that if a small handful of people decide something is news, it's all you'll hear about. We don't really have a competitive marketplace where we decide what we want to hear. Media organizations are scared to death of their (small number of) competitors scooping them to a story, so they fall over each other to report it first. When those Fort Hood shootings happened, there was a stunning amount of misinformation for the first day or so. The media didn't know if there were multiple shooters and who ended up taking the guy out, so they just reported every stupid rumor they heard.

Another reason I've heard cited is the rise of 24-hour cable news networks. 24 hours is a ton of time to fill, so they have to overanalyze stuff to death and bring in stables of "experts" in whatever topic (this is why the Daily Show gives its correspondents ridiculously specific "expert" titles whenever they talk about something).

A lot of reporters are also just really lazy. Tiger Woods is very easy to report on. Every reporter will have a standard list of phrases to draw out any discussion to fit whatever word or time length they need to fill. Stuff like "what does it mean?" that conveniently never has any real answer.

Media and Consumers are 2 sides of the same coin. On the one hand you can pick what you consume, but on the other hand, they can choose what to feed you.
To put it in an ironic way: What do you think all those coffee addicted "pretend to be an educated person" women would do while stuffing themselves with cookies, if it weren't for those news? Do you seriously believe their mental capabilities are enough to understand the problems behind e.g. the debts the country piles up? (speaking in general terms here, not only the states or my home country)

Also, celebrities are an easy way for people without personalities to identify themselves with. If e.g. poor little 12 year old Timmy sucks at playing tennis, he can just turn on the "news" and hear about his favorite tennis star having a streak of bad luck, making him feel better.

And as you might know, nothing feels as good as gloating over another persons misfortune. It makes people forget their own worries and gives them something else to focus on, not that it helps in any way, mind you, it is just their favorite past time seeing the mighty fall. Been that way since the beginning of humanity.

If you allow that I'll slightly digress from the topic, I'll put it this way. Life is similar to the ancient Greek Aristotelian drama theory. It is determined that you need a certain social status to fall (known as fall-height), thus the drama was only for the nobles, kings etc, while the common folk enjoyed the comedy which didn't convey that much of a philosophy (apperantly, much of the org. information has been lost), but included the rougher humor, gloating over other peoples misfortune and amusing the people, making them forget their lesser worries.

In other words, exactly how the modern society works. The ones with an education that are active in politics etc prefer the drama (news about important politic decision), the ones without education prefer to know whos prominent kid managed to shoot himself in his foot with daddies handgun (comedy).

Factors involved other than the obvious "nobody except for gibbous has any taste whatsoever":

1.) This is no recent phenomenon; "news" have been focused on celebrity boulderdash since the dawn of the press; the first newspapers concerned themselves chiefly with which noble married what princess and what lady showed up at Lord Chumblepot-upon-Tyne's grand reception. And so it remains to this day.

2.) Celebrity news are cheap. They require far less money, time and effort than true investigative journalism. They generate revenue (by way of ratings) very quickly and efficiently.

3.) Journalists will not report things which advertisers object to - so as to not lose ad revenue. Journalists will not report on political matters that would effectively sever their ties to the political establishment. Journalists will not report on things that disagree with their proprietor's opinion. What remains as fair game for reportage are catastrophes and celebrity news.

4.) Journalists are clueless, uneducated, dumb rabble. Reporting on celebrities requires no education or intellect whatsoever and is thus tailor-made for them. As an added bonus it never effectively threatens the journalists' ego - it actually strokes it even, because the journalist can always look down on the subjects of his writing. "Hur hur, that $CELEBRITY isn't any better than me! Look at $CELEBRITY cheating on their spouse just like I do!"

5.) This problem is compounded by journalists constantly committing the Similar Mind Fallacy, thinking everyone else to be as terrible individuals as they are. This mental trick allows the journalists to believe that the people want what the media hand to them, because "normal people are just like us journalists, and we deem this awesome news". In reality, the people have much less choice, because much of the media is but in a few hands, and have been streamlined to be as similar to each other as possible. Pepsi vs. Cola.

6.) Your garden variety working stiff will probably not want to hear of The Defensive Behaviour of Larvae in the Tenthredinoidea Family after 12 hours in the steel mill; but it is delusional to assume he cannot comprehend political reportage. Not all people of little education are troglodytes; it's simply a matter of presentation, above all. Sadly, the journalists' idea of presentation inevitably boils down to the Pravda Model: Look at the drunken dirty guy! Laugh at the dirty guy! Don't listen to the coal miners' complaints! Laugh at the drunken dirty guy!

I agree with gibbous on large parts. Though journalism, if you study it, is one of the hardest to get in and to manage university studies that you can go for in Germany, there is still the problem that gibbous mentioned. Why? The reason is quite simple.
The ones with a proper education go to newspapers for people that are
a) educated
b) got the nerve / time to read the article properly
c) join a the reporting team of a "state- founded- /and funded" program.***

That means that you can pretty much split the media in two parts.
The major part that the 54 year old, let's call her Ms. Murphy, around the corner with no proper education wants. In Germany that is the "Bild". Basically a "newspaper" (I'd rather call it garbage) that spreads every crap they can find with any words they can find, that doesn't look upon the facts very... seriously. Who dies today can mysteriously revive tomorrow due to *insert random excuse here*.

Than there is the political, financial, scientific interesting news, they require patience, time and quite a bit of understanding of the matter in itself. Of course, as gibbous said, average worker X that works for god knows how many hours does not want to go home to read in eloquent words that politician Y is about to cut down his social securities again.
That kind of news is aimed mostly at interested readers that receive the necessary education to understand the vocabulary of those advanced newspapers at the age of 16+.

Now if we take a view at the standpoint of a reporter for a boulevard newspaper / magazine. Not only did he not necessarily study journalism, no, he also has to meet the requirements by his chef. And his chef, boss or whatever you want to call the person at the top just wants one thing. News that sell to the masses, that they can gloat over and where they can point their fingers at. Basically it just needs to sell.
What sells best? Affairs, sex, debacles, catastrophes. The bloodier, the dirtier, the more dramatic the better, because after all, the more you shock the public, the more your newspaper sells --> money. If it includes an "honest" person falling from grace, all the better, because nothing makes the large masses as happy as elevating them above another by saying "I'd never do something as stupid as that", while they realize they have just been thrown out of their flat for now paying their taxes.

To go back to the main point: In the history of journalism and the media it is known that the media is always consumer oriented. If no one would want to know why X loves Y it wouldn't sell. However, humans are by nature curious, so as always, there are some who love to gossip about such things.

Though I have to say that in the past, princess x marrying with prince y had a meaning as it could change the politics of the country drastically, including trade, politics, science etc, so it could be vital information. Or it could just be the flush down the toilette gossip your bombarded with every day.

***State founded and funded means basically that even though they (sometimes) broadcast (entertainment) crap, they also broadcast many political debates, meetings etc and have quite a lot of "informing" news that give you a broader perspective of whats happening in the world.

I like this statement, but it doesn't exactly fit my thoughts. I think it's better to say that people don't want to be involved in the decisions. The real world is depressing and complex its not something that people what complicating their day everyday. Starvation, disease, genocide, war these things are constantly happening some where on the globe, and people just don't want to constantly be burned and scared with these things.

Sure you occasionally would get some good news but news is primarily bad news normal things just aren't news so they don't turn up. So people turn to celebrities and news that doesn't matter they allow that to be their replacement. What happens in celebrities lives becomes their outlet to a world without those problems.

So whose to blame well personally its us, we are to blame our fear of reality is to blame for said "useless news".

(This might not be strictly relevant, but my mother does not know my own birthday, but she does know Brad Pitts.

I'm going to repeat that. She does not know her own son`s birthday, but she know the birthday of a man that she never has and never will meet.)


However on the flipside, once you become a celebrity, in return for certain priveleges, you give up certain rights. One of these rights being the right to your own privacy. If you don't want to have pretty much everybody know what you are up to every single day, then you shouldn't become a celebrity. And if you're going to do something stupid, then you deserve whatever results come of it.

With all that in mind, Tiger Woods is a fad. All that the people need is for another scandal to break out or someone to die and BAM everyone will forget.