Featured Stories

I am trying to understand the mentality of the news services and the news readers and news watchers who consume their content. Just what is news worthy today and what should be featured news? If you logged on to a newspaper on line or bought one at a news stand recently you got the following stories as features (and some of them long term featured stories).

First, here was the 4 day near news orgy about basketball player Lebron James deciding what city for which he would play basketball. This included one city team owner, that of Lebron's current Cleveland team, ranting about how Lebron was disloyal and immoral for not staying in the city he currently represents. Lebron made a job site change to improve his economic status. Yet we got a long term soap opera about nothing that really matters.

Then we have the "Gibson tapes", a voyeuristic exercise in displaying actor Mel Gibson in a private melt down in which he utters vulgar and racist remarks about his ex gf (with whom he is currently in engaged in a child custody dispute). This one has been in the news, a stolen video of the rant plastered all over the media. But why should we be interested in Gibson's personal domestic problems or his insensitive remarks? In what way does knowing this benefit anyone?

A third non story being pounded to death is the Russian spy saga in which ten amateur and innocuous Russian "spies" were arrested in the U.S. (and eventually traded for several American spies being held in Russia). All media accounts admitted the spies were harmless and gathered no information other than what anyone could not have found with a personal computer. Being no threat to U.S. security apparently elevates oneself to prime time coverage if you "spy" because media outlets know that bogus patriotism angled stories sell among the ignorant masses. It sort of says the mediums think we are awfully dumb.

A fourth prominent story is the Celine Dion pregnancy report. After being badgered by media to tell about her latest pregnancy, uh, she held a press conference to announce she was pregnant with twin boys. What's next, perhaps a bathroom report on Lady Gaga? Should adults with normal IQ's really spend their time reading that kind of story? No wonder so many are so misinformed about issues that really matter to their lives. Well, at least they know about the celebrity baby news.

It's almost as if reality TV producers were managing the news service industry today, choosing what is sensational or amusing and burying news of real importance at the bottom of the page. Surely, given the profit motive, news sellers will report what the public wants, even when the public wants stupidity and triviality. But they seem to have no shame about what news has become (and some even pretend their non news is important news). And I wonder why the public doesn't demand better from the news sources.

Maybe this is just the age of inconsequence in which importance takes to much time or effort to interpret. What do you think?