With the era of ever-expanding technology among us, media outlets are everywhere we look. They continue to feed us more information, whether we want it or not. However, with great power comes great responsibility and those with such authority are losing touch with what the public needs to hear: the dependable news.
We’ve always been told that more is better, right? Not necessarily. More facts and stories being delivered through every news medium doesn’t make the information more credible or newsworthy. Now, in the dawn of “Kimye” and “Biebernation,” it’s even tougher to find an article or news update that doesn’t incorporate some aspect of these celebrities and their fantasized lives.
Sure, they are real people, but there are more pressing issues happening in our world than North West’s newest Louis Vuitton onesie. This is why sources like TMZ and Us Weekly were created as “news mediums” for celebrity gossip that has no place next to an article in Time about the worsening civil war in Syria. Despite this, they always seem to wiggle their way back into news sources they don’t belong in.
During an interview last month with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Congresswoman Jane Harman, they discussed criticism about the NSA’s phone spying program when Mitchell interrupts Harman mid-sentence to deliver an important breaking news story.
“Congresswoman Harman, let me interrupt you just for a moment we’ve got some breaking news out of Miami, stand by if you will. Right now in Miami, Justin Bieber has been arrested on a number of charges,” said Mitchell.
Apparently there was nothing else happening in the world more urgent than Bieber’s anticipated drunken joyride. Congratulations MSNBC; you just lost half of whatever viewership you were hanging on to. Did anyone else just lower their heads in sheer embarrassment of this country?
With news stations constantly struggling to keep ratings up, they’ve shamelessly compromised their credibility with the integration of celebrity gossip as “news” to reach a wider span of viewers. Piers Morgan Live on CNN constantly reaffirms this notion in his segments. He interviews an array of people from all areas of society but the conversations always revert back to famous people and the ridiculous things they do.
The lines have been blurred between real news and celebrity news and it takes foraging through sources to find a credible and reliable provider of information society desperately needs to know. Kids growing up in this already delusional generation will lack the ability to decipher between what is factual-based news and what is sensationalized gossip. At this rate, Wikipedia will end up being the most credible news source for people.
Just because some news stations have gone soft doesn’t mean we all have to. We must demand the truth within news and although it may not be thrown in our faces as much as celebrity gossip, it’s worth taking that extra step to find. Celebrity gossip will inevitably be a part of the conversation but there is no place for it within credible news organizations. Let TMZ and E! handle the in-depth, investigative reports on who fit into a red dress better and leave real news to news organizations.
