There is never a shortage of celebrity news and gossip in today’s media. Who’s marrying who? Which designer made the dress so and so is wearing and how much did it cost? It seems the public can’t get enough of the trivial yet admittedly addictive world of celebrity.
This is at least the attitude supported by BBC director general Mark Thompson, who has disputed recent claims by the chancellor Gordon Brown asserting that the public mood is in fact shifting away from celebrity culture and towards a greater interest in serious issues.
Mr Thompson argues that the public still have a great desire to see celebrities, despite the acceptance that there is indeed a stronger appetite for serious news today then there was 10 years ago; a fact which he attributes simply to the increase in foreign news available to analyse and report on. In his defence against Gordon Brown, he suggests that events such as Comic Relief, which hopes to raise more than £70 million this year, are self-evidently focused around stars and celebrities and the mass of money donated can be seen as an example demonstrating the public’s ongoing interest in ‘the famous’.
He also states that the threat to independent journalism is growing around the world and it is becoming more difficult to provide free and serious journalism in many countries; a fact which is contributing to the proliferation of celebrity culture-based news, arguably much easier to access. But is this really the case? Are we actually a society obsessed with celebrity news and trivia? The expanding sales of celebrity magazines in both the UK and the USA would suggest so, with estimates that news stands in the UK selling Women’s Weekly alone shift 7.8 million copies each week.
As Jess Best, a second year Journalism student at Cardiff said “The proliferation of celebrity news and magazines means it is the easiest form of news to consume and we often have no other choice”. One could suggest that for many, celebrity figures are seen as role models for the younger generation and this is why the public are failing to lose interest in them. Moreover, it is arguable that serious news is in fact too serious, and that people would rather immerse themselves in a light-hearted, trivial article about how Charlotte Church is pregnant rather than learn about the recent tragedies at Virginia Tech University.
As Annie Buckle from Cardiff says, “Celebrity news offers you a way to escape from ‘the real world’ and the occurrences within it”. Serious news stories often generate concern and compassion in the reader and perhaps the public would rather read up about something which does not directly affect them or their emotions. However, some people disagree and believe that serious news is of far more substance and relevance and should not take second place to the celebrity gossip in today’s media.
Holly Joy Pearce, studying medicine at Cardiff University, states, “Personally I have little interest in celebrities but I appreciate that a lot of people do. However, I think it would be an idea to separate serious and celebrity news stories more in the media. Tabloid newspapers are there to broadcast celebrity news and therefore broadsheet newspapers should be more dedicated to serious news, offering people the choice to engage with stories they feel have the most relevance and interest to them without being either ‘dumbed down’ or bombarded with political and other forms of ‘heavy’ news”.
One would argue that it is safe to say that today’s society as a whole is not bored of celebrities quite yet. The myriad of celebrity news in all aspects and types of the media makes it impossible to escape from them, and therefore we may as well just accept it and have a giggle reading about Gavin Henson’s strop over students taking pictures of him in the Taf. After all, looking at pictures of celebrities with cellulite and over users of fake tan makes us feel better about ourselves, right?
