Dear Mr. TV Network CEO, Online and/or print news editor,
I do not care what Mel Gibson said or did. Really I don't. If he shot a Jew, that would be news. This = not news.
Hey, what's going on in the Middle East? I heard a lot of innocent civilians died in Lebanon last weekend. How's Castro doing? What would him dying mean for Cuba? By the way, how's that whole Communism thing working for them? I've heard it sucks. But hey, if you're going to cover these, just cover them. No fancy graphics, no puns, no elementary phrases.
Horrendous acts of violence and hatred occur every day in just about every neighborhood of this country, but these events many times go unreported by you because the perpetrators aren't celebrities. If Mel was an Average Joe, would his arrest and comments have made headlines?
Also, if he or anyone else had been yelling bigoted epithets about Christians, would the coverage have been the same? Let's say it was a director who had made a film many believed to be anti-Christian who was arrested. Would that arrest and the directors comments have made so many headlines? Is it because Christians are in the majority -- does it just not count as much?
Basically, I'd like for you to actually report the news. Not celebrity gossip, not sensationalized tabloid fodder. News.
Thanks.
Yours truly,
Sarah.
P.S. You're contributing to the downfall of our society.
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5 comments:
enh?
i agree that lebanon, cuba and iraq are more important, but isn't it sort of a false dichotomy to say that the press covering Mel Gibson somehow interferes with their covering these other issues?
and isn't "prominence" one of those news-determinant-thingies?
I'm pretty sure dichotomy wasn't the word you were looking for Matthew, and being as most news programs are only an hour long, there is a defined time period that gets taken up when people speculate on Mel's racism for 1/3 of that time.
But the really important part of all of this is how stupid America is, because we obviously care so much more about Mel and his drunken rants, that affects almost nothing, than we do global problems which are affecting millions. Why is that?
While celebrity is one of the news determinants, there are also the matters of relevance and proximity to consider. Mel Gibson's drunken comments only carry the "weight" people ascribe to them because of the remembered controversy surrounding the release of The Passion of the Christ. Other than that, this is still just another tabloid story of a movie star screwing up. The Malibu cops doubtless let this kind of thing go all the time; Gibson's troubles only came when he insulted the female cop and then kept going.
But the whole story is forgettable. It's not as if this is going to change anyone's mind about Gibson. He cast his lot with The Passion; that was the dividing line, not this. The charismatic movie star has been gone for years now. The entire affair is just pointless.
Tucker said...
I'm pretty sure dichotomy wasn't the word you were looking for Matthew
No, that's what I meant.
false dichotomy
In other words, Sarah presents the options as being
1. Be serious journalists, and present only news about Iraq, Cuba and Lebanon, or
2. Be frivolous journalists, by mixing the news abuot Iraq, Cuba and Lebanon with a piece about Mel Gibson's anti-semitism.
Also, did you actually watch any news programs -- or, even better, read any newspapers -- that devoted a full third of their time in a single day to the Gibson story? A third of their time across the course of a week?
I just think Sarah's being a little hard on the press, that's all.
I work in a newsroom. I just earned a degree in journalism and mass communication. I think I'm entitled to be hard on the profession I've chosen.
In our newsroom, we've got TV news channels on all the time, usually CNN or MSNBC. I also keep CNN.com open in a window on my computer while I work. I also am able to run through the AP, WSJ and Scripps Howard news wires, and lately have been pulling items from the business wire for the section. All this to say, I generally know what's going on throughout the day.
Yes, the cable news shows devoted an enormous amount of time to the Mel Gibson story. Just about every time I'd look at the TV screen, there he'd be, either clips from his movies or his new mug shot (that at least is better than Nick Nolte's).
A quick scan of the New York Times' and Washington Post's Web sites shows that they've carried the wire stories about Mel and have printed them online, but I'm betting most of them didn't make it into the papers. Online news in an increasingly more competitive outlet of the media. The main things I've seen in print have been opinion pieces.
We live in a time when idiotic cable news pundits spew worthless banter into our homes and offices, and it's becoming increasingly harder to distinguish the news segments from the opinion segments. It's just a joke. This is why I don't really watch cable news shows, unless they're fake and on Comedy Central.
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