Author: Elayne Riggs

I think many of us suspect that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the fact that just about everybody reading this knows of the recent exploits of Paris Hilton.  If you’re at all attuned to media old and new, it’s nearly impossible to escape the breathless news about her latest adventures in crime and punishment, or at least the breathless reprimands the news media give themselves over the saturation coverage — although heaven forfend most of them stoop to using the first-person plural and actually assuming responsibility!  Even otherwise sensible pundits like Keith Olbermann (whose hard-hitting "Special Reports" many consider the modern incarnation of vaunted newsman Edward R. Murrow) can’t seem to stay away from peeping in on, and drooling over, daily celebrity hijinks.

Why the obsession? Well, the simple answer is ratings.  Just as sex sells, so does fame — particularly the doings of people who are "famous for being famous." (Presumably they’re considered "fairer game" because, when well-known people with actual proven talents get into trouble, they tend to elicit more public sympathy based on those talents?) Sometime during the Reagan era, when cable was still young, the three major US news networks were acquired by corporate owners with little to no interest in providing public service, which was formerly understood and never questioned as being the point of news.  Those corporate owners decided to make loss-leader news divisions into profit centers, gradually closed down local bureaus all over the world, and news became just another commercial product designed to grab eyeballs and ratings.  With the proliferation of 24-hour cable news networks this downward slide into banality became an avalanche.

And it’s not like there isn’t enough interesting and entertaining stuff going on in the world to fill 24-hour news days. But even more important than ratings is the fact that corporate heads don’t want to take a chance on anything unproven or too far out of their comfort zone. The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq is one of the more egregious examples of late; any opposition to continued and compounded illegalities in that region has been seen as not only out of the mainstream and therefore not fit for TV time, but as borderline unpatriotic and possibly treasonous to consider discussing in a public forum. Ironically, the few programs that have managed to slip through and present an alternative view to mainstream media war-whoops have garnered respectable ratings from an audience obviously weary of hearing only one side of things, the side that continually asks, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Celebrity news falls deeply into these people’s comfort zone.  Not only are corporate owners all rich (and mostly straight white men, which usually goes without saying but not here), but they often socialize with other rich people, many of whom are also celebrities. They want their public to care about the lifestyles of the rich and famous because they lead those lifestyles, and like to believe the public cares about them as much as they care about themselves.

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