Ben and Jen have finally called it quits.
Paris Hilton stars in a homemade sex tape.
Howard Dean is a screeching, angry maniac.
Journalism is now just a quaint idea designed to fulfill our ravenous, unending hunger for cheap tabloid gossip and witless soft news sound bites.
Though I would have loved to see that last sentence printed in big, bold letters on the front page of some national newspaper, I knew that would never happen. But if you scanned any newspaper in the past few months then you probably have noticed that some variant on the first three sentences were probably formed into some big, shocking headline.
Fed from the celebrity grinding-mill, modern journalism has grown weary and bloated and is far too enthralled with its own importance. Long gone is the sense of duty to the community, the passion for telling the truth, no matter what cost. What we have instead is a trite, trivial program designed to rehash the same limp, pointless stories over and over again without imparting anything new or useful in the American continuum.
Gone are the days when Woodward and Bernstein used their journalistic instincts to uncover the truth about Watergate, or the days when Veronica Guerin risked her life to let the world know about the culprits behind Ireland’s inner city drug trade.
Who are today’s crusading journalists? The guys who brought to attention Hilton’s foray into amateur porn? Gossip, rumor-mongering and public humiliation of public celebrities is the name of the game, at least when the media isn’t buying into the government’s dogma hook, line and sinker. The depth of most modern media involves repeating the same calculated quotes that the same old press secretaries and publicists dump out into the open. Are there any journalists out there – and I’m talking about the mainstream, big-press media, not the extreme liberal/conservative fringe dwellers out there – concerned with delving into the truth behind the current government’s many shady policies (including an increasingly more corrupt, damaging and useless war) and willing to push forward in an attempt to reveal the God’s honest truth, whether it’s hurtful or helpful to our current Commander-in-Chief?
I don’t see anyone volunteering. All I see are the same stories, repeatedly endlessly, using the same hackneyed information emanating from the same, safe source. No one challenges the pro forma attitude of modern politics; instead, they routinely repeat whatever closed-off political rhetoric they are told to “report.”
Of course, it may just be that the media is too lazy and/or indulgent to actually bother on reporting real hot-button issues. Why concern yourself with issues that seemingly appeal to only so few NPR-listening eggheads, when you can concentrate on the world of celebrity? Celebrity-worship has gotten to such a point that there is even a mental “disease” used to describe our fascination with the famous. To me, it sounds like a pop-psych acronym used to de-vilify stalking, but now I’m just starting to get off track.
It’s big business these days in the media to revel in the embarrassments of our supposedly beloved famous people. The relationship between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck was endlessly dissected and discussed in the news, to the captivation of no one. Yet magazine after magazine, headline after headline trumpeted the final, permanent break-up of the couple. That is, when they weren’t bleating about Hilton’s unwanted exposure or Dean’s strangulated vocal mannerisms (Dean’s alien approximation of jubilance was a bigger news story than the Democratic candidate’s actual stance on issues, a truly sad state of affairs.) Currently, Janet Jackson is making headlines thanks to her breast-flashing Superbowl stunt. This isn’t news. It’s a joke.
Affleck and Lopez have the right to break up in piece, and Hilton – a girl who hasn’t even done anything to deserve celebrity-dom beyond being a tabloid darling – has the right to tape herself having sex if that gets her juices flowing. Everyone goes through break-ups; I’m sure a decent number of people have taped themselves having sex. Things like that aren’t newsworthy. They are personal choices, and it has no bearing on life as it is lived by everyone else. As for Jackson, her action was nothing more than a stupid, shameless stunt enacted by a barely talented pop tart desperate to keep her name alive in a clogged marketplace likely to forget her. It does not deserve comment on the front page of newspaper, nor does it deserve the scandal that it spurred. It just does not deserve the hype.
With more important stories needing to be told, how come we are just given the same old rehashed horse and pony show? I don’t want to turn onto the news and see real life as it happens, not pre-fab political soundbites and cheap celebrity gossip.
Johnny Donaldson is a Collegian columnist.
