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Slackpole

When Did Everything Become Celebrity Gossip?

Not to pile on the landfill of bizarreosity that is modern American life, but I just noticed something (else) incredibly disturbing—most news has become E! entertainment celebrity gossip. If you break down the headlines now, about half of them are essentially gossip.

Part One of these headlines generally goes something like:

“Politician of one party says something snide about politician of different party.”

“NFL linebacker tweets something strange about his love of local honey. Coach reacts strongly.”

“Your mother is a terrible, evil, horrible person. We should imprison her immediately because of her recent Facebook posts.”

Part Two is where they subdivide it into:

“…different party. Democrats up in arms.” (mainly figuratively)

OR

“…different party. Republicans up in arms.” (possibly literally—it’s a better armed party.)

AND

“…Coach reacts strongly. He hates local honey. Democrats up in arms.”

OR

“…Coach reacts strongly. He hates local honey. Republicans up in arms.”

We’ll leave your mother out of this section. She’s clearly evil. Everyone knows that. 

When did ALL news become gossip? It must work, at least as clickbait, if not as information, since it is in no way actual information. Politics have always had some of this, but now MOST of the political news headlines I see are some form of gossip. Sports, I expect better from you.  Sports, you’re supposed to be a refuge. I’m not saying that professional athletes all need to be Tom Bradyesque mannequins who mumble a bunch of words while managing to say absolutely nothing and express no strong opinions whatsoever. They’re Americans. They’ve got the right to free speech like anybody else. 

This issue falls mainly on the heads of journalists (with a carved-out exception for Flagpole reporters, of course), and even more firmly on the heads of the corporate honchos who are gobbling up most news outlets… in order to not report the news. (Once again, Flagpole is an exception. And I’m not just saying this so you’ll run the article. Well, not entirely.) 

Journalists have a lot of power to set the narrative. They can immortalize events, sayings, attitudes. It’s even more important than ever, in this strange journalistic era, that America’s reporters stay on their game and ignore the temptation to slide into celebrity gossip… other than your mother’s Facebook posts, of course.  

Like most self-imposed holes that we’ve dug for ourselves, this one has an easy fix. Stop reporting this nonsense. Yes, it really is that simple. Let the politicians talk their smack. Let the athletes tweet their nonsense. And get your mother off Facebook. That isn’t helping anyone.

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