Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

EDITORIAL: Putrid interests insulting in news media
Staff Editorial
The Lariat (Baylor U.)
02/15/2007

(U-WIRE) WACO, Texas — Last week, the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the subsequent attention given to it was a telling moment for our culture.

With so many things going on in the world, many of us decided to drop everything and give our undivided attention to this circus sideshow. There is plenty of blame to go around. Nobody can solely blame the media or the public. Both made the choice to give attention to this story. No story of war, disease or poverty could've taken precedent when news broke of Smith's death.

It seems as if our society is fixated on the cult of celebrity so much that the less a famous person deserves to be famous, the more interest we show in them.We also have a problem with getting our entertainment from other people's tragedy. We all have a vulture-like nature in which we vicariously feed off other people's suffering. Like a freak show or a train wreck — we are all guilty of watching when we probably shouldn't.

People may excuse themselves from this by saying that it's simply an interesting or tragic story and that's why they watch. That doesn't excuse the fact that much of Smith's celebrity came from her dysfunctional life. The more attention we paid to it, the more dysfunction it caused.

The current state of our culture is one where the likes of Paris Hilton and American Idol capture our attention far more than worthy stories like global warming, racism, poverty, globalization, the Iraq troop surge, the threat of Iran, child soldiers, ExxonMobil's record profits or the Scooter Libby trial.

While we are all collectively guilty, the media deserves a lot of the blame, too. As soon as the news broke, the media jumped on the story like a pack of wild dogs. This paper chose to run the story because Smith is from the local town of Mexia and the certain prominence the story would recieve.

A common excuse for the media's incessant coverage of this is that people wanted to watch. While it is given that people need to be informed, they don't need to be immediately updated on every minute development of the story.

Coverage of Anna Nicole Smith is doing us all a disservice. The media does it because it's cheap to cover and many will watch because it's on air. We have the technology and resources to be the most well-informed democracy on earth, but study after study has shown this isn't the case.

That is because we have an irresponsible corporate mainstream media largely unwilling to go after stories of substance. All the while, the public is too consumed with its individual pursuits and too complacent to demand a more forthright media system.

While it's unfortunate when a person dies, we all look at the events of this story and label it a tragedy when there are far worse things happening in the world that sadly receive a lot less of our valuable attention.

Perhaps we would rather look at Anna Nicole Smith's death and dwell on it for hours on end and label that a tragedy instead of looking right at the world around us.

Here's a news flash: At least three soldiers on average will die in Iraq tomorrow. About 16,000 children will die around the world from hunger tomorrow. Ice caps will melt, violence will happen in the Middle East and 45 million Americans will be without health care tomorrow.

Surely these stories are more deserving of our attention. Perhaps we will find time to devote our attention to these issues tomorrow.

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