Monday, August 29, 2005

"You're excited?! Feel these nipples!"

Just wanted to begin with a Bob Costas quote from BASEketball to get everyone's attention. So there's that.

Now, on to the actual topic. My favorite columnist Leonard Pitts wrote a column today about the news media's decline into fluff, using Costas as an example of the rare remaining journalist who actually wants to report news rather than feed the public appetite for sensation. It is telling to me that I was familiar with all the celebrity "news stories" he cites in the second paragraph, and not with Costas' stand on principle when he refused to guest host "Larry King Live" after learning that the focus of the episode was going to be the ongoing Natalee Holloway fiasco.

For those of you who have been living in a tree, on Pluto, in an alternate dimension, and are thus unfamiliar with that story, Natalee Holloway is the unfortunate Alabama teenager who went missing during a senior trip to Aruba. CNN (and doubtless other major news networks) has seen fit to report on this story every day for the past three months. And I admit, I do get a little choked up every time I see that picture of her with her friends, looking young and pretty and care-free. I want to believe she's all right. I desperately want to believe that she actually ran off to Europe with some kind Casanova who promised and delivered her the world. But I don't. If nothing else, I at least want peace for her family, for it all to be over. I think we all do. Which must be why we kept watching no matter how exhausted we get.

Pitts points out that modern media thrives on sensationalism, on telling a story that sounds like it could have come straight from Hollywood. (Some conspiracy theorists might actually believe this is the case.) Such stories must, of need, depict attractive people, harrowing circumstances, occasional plot twists. That happy ending is the only thing the media usually can't deliver. But we tune in, hoping that somehow they will.

He concludes with a question: "Shouldn't the news be about the things that affect us, instead of just those that titillate us?" A simple case of want vs. need. In reality, we need the media to give us the information vital to our day-to-day lives, the actions of state and local governments and so forth. But what we want, for the most part, is a good story. We want something to distract us from our lives, if only for a moment. It's the allure of reality TV: the idea that perhaps real life can be packaged like the movies, like entertainment, and be constantly compelling and melodramatic. However, I think I know how the Rolling Stones would answer...

Song lyric of the day:
"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You just might find you get what you need"

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