Bomb-blast headlines! The latest Kardashian news! Up to date celebrity so-and-so gossip! Anyone else get the feeling that today’s news focus is a little too……trivial? There was once a time when news media was the true peoples champion, a watchdog against corporate greed and political scandal, a way in which the deeds of the powerful were brought to light for the clarity and betterment of the common folk. Now this isn’t all to say that the current media is completely obsessed with the latest gossip that Hollywood has to offer, but the amount of focus placed on these things and the staggering number of headlines they achieve vs. the coverage of real events influencing international change is sometimes saddening.
For example, how many people do you think paid more attention to the recent resurgence of Chris Brown related incidents, or Nicki Minaj’s addition to American Idol due to the continuing coverage its gotten across social media news outlets, versus the amount of attention they paid to the ongoing US Embassy crisis throughout the Middle East? The celebrity events seem trivial in comparison to the real, important, events transpiring across the seas, yet when compared to the amount of coverage celebrity media gets, the international news is almost non-existent. News and the Press sometimes pushes beyond the set boundaries of 1st Amendment Rights into tabloid-esque and oftentimes social popularist topics. Forgoing the true issues of our world, Government, and society to cater to the latest “Kardashian” gossip or a similar focus on celebrity and otherwise irresponsibly unimportant news. But perhaps this is not all the media’s fault. Perhaps we as a people place far too much importance on the superficial heroes of our day. Maybe if we didn’t pay so much attention to it, or react as positively to celebrity news it would cease to be the defining point of our societies daily lives.
We are in a constant battle for relevance in today’s world, and as a result we tend to focus too much on what those we look up too do with their everyday lives, rather than focusing on solutions for the world and it’s bigger problems. I believe that we as a people experience information overload, but if we can begin to weed out the unimportant inputs from the world around us, and focus more on the issues that truly require and deserve attention, then the media and news outlets around us will happily do the same; and maybe, just maybe, we can get things in the news back to the way they should be, fair, and just.