A spokesman for the Chicago Tribune said that even news organizations like it, which has a strict policy against chasing celebrities down like so many mechanical rabbits at a greyhound race, will be smeared by the anger against paparazzi following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. He’s right, and the smear will be well deserved.
It has been noted by loftier journalists than I that “serious” news organizations cover the sleaziest stories by merely reporting what the tabloids are doing. National Public Radio, the Trib and the like report with shock and disgust that the tabloids have sunk to new lows by reporting stuff … THIS! It’s a little like the joke about the two older ladies discussing the food at a certain restaurant. The first one says, “The liver was awful.” The second replies, “Yes, and worse, such small portions.”
The journalistic excuse for peddling second-hand smut is that it’s “what people want.” Of course, that’s also the argument for the sale of cigarettes and crack cocaine. (I apologize in advance for the insult to sellers of crack cocaine.) It is not clear to me that people “want” maniacally obsessive coverage of anyone who has ever been engaged or indicted. An ad for the Barbra Streisand film “The Mirror Has Two Faces” declared, “There are two things every woman knows, what she wants and what she’ll settle for.” Many of us want news we can use, but will settle for thrills to amuse. Were they not readily available, few of us would seek out Tootsie Rolls, but if they are a reach-of-the-hand from the checkout counter I may well, with some regrets, grab one. Many of our purchases are not what we want, but what habit, enculturation and marketing compel us to desire.
Our taste for titillation cannot be wholly blamed on “the media.” Humans like gossip, as in unproven tales of distant people, and we always have. Were it not for stories of incest, bestiality and castration, would anyone in Athens have paid attention to the gods? The all-time highest-rated edition of ABC’s “Nightline” was not its thoughtful analysis of 40 years of world history seen through the prism of U.S.-Soviet relations, but when Ted Koppel interviewed Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
What we think of as “the news” includes everything from the Mars Pathfinder to the daily horoscope, from the stock markets to stock car racing. Part of what “serious” news organizations do is spread gossip. Sometimes it’s unofficial gossip, like the amount of Michael Jordan’s contract. Other times it’s official gossip, like FBI speculation about Andrew Cunanan dressing as a woman to avoid capture.
Where there are humans, there is excess. Like politicians and the celebrities they cover, news organizations sink to depths as low as the highs of the heights to which they often rise. They are like rotten alewives in the moonlight, they shine and stink and they always have. Thomas Jefferson described a newspaper reader as one “whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” Richard Jewell would not disagree.
“Serious journalists” stick microphones into the faces of grieving teens and ask, “How does it feel?” It is thus, in my view, disingenuous of them to pretend to be a different species from the folks who publish pictures of what made the teens grieve. News is gossip and gossip is news. In the same section of the store, I can get the Weekly World News, the Sun, People Magazine, Scientific American and the Wall Street Journal. As some dead pale man once said, “If there are 12 clowns in the ring, you can jump into the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience you’ll just be the 13th clown.”
