britney spears - has news journalism lost its way

Britney fucking Spears all over the news, the BBC world news, supposedly the flagship news broadcaster of the civilised world. In depth interviews with reporters live in LA discussing Britney's childcare problems and mental health...

It's all very sad, I feel sorry for Britney and her family, but I do not want this on the news. Exactly this kind of thing is going on in a thousand households all over the country, millions more all over the world. It's not just unseemly, it's downright reprehensible and irresponsible of news journalists to abuse their position by lazily filling airtime with this puff-of-smoke celebrity curtain-twitching, putting it up there alongside war, disease and famine.

This is not news! Normally a staunch defender of everything the BBC stands for, over this I am appalled with and ashamed of the BBC...

 

Yeah, I'm fed up with it. Moreover, I actually feel sorry for these multi-millionaire stars. Their success has made them zoo property. And the general population are every bit as much to blame as the media they devour. The jealousy instinct has people put their heroes on pedestals like in-crowd kids following their leader, but it delights in watching them topple all the more. It's disgusting. I think people should be ashamed of themselves for buying celebrity gossip magazines that one week jump on a star for being too fat in the pictures obtained by camping on their doorstep, then the next wonder why they've gone annorexic. The media respond to patterns of consumption every bit as much as they drive them. And shamefully, the BBC too have their hand in it....

 

You know, if the paparazzi followed regular people around they could go to jail for stalking, voyeurism. But apparently it's not illegal if the person they're stalking is famous. I bet a judge would laugh at a celebrity if they ever tried to get restraining orders on the paparazzi. And what about the tabloids? Not all of that shit is true, that's libel and slander. Also supposedly illegal. What a great justice system America has.

 

Consumers are the ones who drive demand by buying and watching this kind of thing, it's a fundamental human instinct to be fascinated by gossip about members of our group, and celebrities represent our surrogate social network. But it's news and media who tap into this rubbernecking instinct in their lowest-common-denominator hunt for ratings and sales. I think that's what makes me so disgusted that the BBC plays along with this, it's to be expected where profit is the main factor in any editorial decision, but the BBC is specifically set up to be beyond that, to be exempt from the pressures of the market and to let excellence and insight be priorities in its output. They should be the ones who lead the way by eschewing the saleable fluff and trying to raise standards of journalism. The hardline capitalist media is dragging all of us down into the gutter...

 

thats the trouble with the people see thats where most of them live

 

These people who court publicity only find out too late that they're feeding a monster whose appetite will never be sated, until it suddenly gets bored with them one day and finds a new prey. I didn't see any BBC reports but the front-page splashes in today's Sun and Mirror were sickening enough.

 

This kind of news should be limited to celebrity gossips.

 

I was told once you could sue a newspaper that printed something not true - turns out i was wrong... My teach set me straight a while ago... And isnt that what brits do? ive heard the phrase a few times - when theres a new star we love them and help the reach the top of the chain and once theyre there we push them off.

 

what country are you in? it's a lot easier to sue newspapers in the UK than most other countries - well, easier for rich people that is. though to sue for libel, you have to prove that what they said was not only untrue but defamatory, i.e. likely to harm your reputation.

 

True. I.e if a newspaper ran an article claiming an MP was gay, he could sue for libel if he thought it would hurt his career (with the amount of homophobia in Whitehall, it probably would).
We don't have this "guaranteed freedom of the press" thing the Yanks have... although freedom of the press is a two-edged sword. On the one hand they can run articles slagging off the government, but on the other they can run defamatory muck-raking.

 

yet paradoxically, outside the sphere of celebrity tittle-tattle a lot of Yanks seem to rely on British sources like the Guardian and BBC websites to find out what's really going on.

 

so "Dr Phil Graw" has visited Ms Spears at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and announced to the world's media that she is "in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention".

um, professional ethics anyone?

 

Probably because, for the most part, our media isn't in bed with the government and actually offers (comparatively) unbiased reporting.
The US media is frankly a joke - one word from the government and a story is squashed, and only about 5-10% of their coverage is world news anyway!

 

We are all of us in the gutter, and I'm certain most of us are on some level intrigued and fascinated by hearing about the private doings of others, it's a fundamental instinct fashioned by our evolutionary history of survival in social groups. However I think it is important that our social institutions should cater to our capacity for greatness rather than simply always pandering to the base instincts we all possess...

 

Sorry mate but I don't know Don Quixote comes to mind.

Wasn't egalatarianism abandoned in the eighties in the drive for self satisfaction and is not what you observe just a natural by-product. Saw a proposition though that this might just be a disease of the english speaking world.

 

Humans everywhere have the same instincts and potentialities, but I think you are right to point out that this is very much a development associated with radical unconstrained capitalism and the inevitable consequence of an unregulated free market...

 

Britney Spears is news. I would think that given the more populous nature of the UK they would be more into it even than the US, where all we like is something which feeds into alcoholic or snake bitting Fundamentalism, however BS is news.

How can a beautiful woman who has everything ever still go mad? This is news to many many people who wish to see why this happens, and who wish to view the plot. It's better news than say, how a prime minister can fall prey to economics against moral conscience, which happens almost every moment.

So there.

 

Money really doesn't buy you happiness. Simple.

 

Anything is better than that Madeline McCann. I quite like Britney. Although she might not be that attractive. There is always that infamous button-Standby

 

The Madeleine McCann thing was exactly the same... not news, just ... staring at people who are going through hell.

Charlie Brooker on the McCanns and rolling news:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RRmE0_n0K4