I’m sick of Paris Hilton

June 10th, 2007

It’s early June as I write this, and the story of the week on all the news outlets is Paris Hilton. First, she goes to jail to serve 23 days of her 45 day sentence for driving without a license, this after a DUI and driving on a suspended license. Two days later she is released by the sheriff for house arrest because of some unspecified �medical condition.� The judge, upon hearing this, is understandably furious, and hauls her back into court and decrees that she will now serve all 45 days of her sentence.

Does this sound more like a contrived reality TV show than the evening news? Yeah. It does. Yet, it has eclipsed the arguably more important stories of the day to lead the news on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, and here in Chicago, NBC 5, ABC 7 and Fox 32. Cooler heads prevailed at CBS 2 and WGN, only mentioning the Paris Hilton fiasco in the �top stories� part of the newscast, thankfully not leading with it. I will give credit where credit is due, though. Most of my local stations here in Chicago are pretty good at covering local news and issues, despite the fact that almost all of the local television media are network owned and operated stations (CBS 2, NBC 5, ABC 7, Fox 32, Telemundo 44, and Univision 66 are all owned by their respective networks � WGN is the exception, owned by The Tribune Company, publisher of the Chicago Tribune).

So lets take a look at what else was going on when this �story� was breaking, shall we?

President George W. Bush flew to Germany to attend the G8 summit, only after he got there, he decided to play hooky, claiming he wasn’t feeling well. I wish I could get out of meetings that easily.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is all in a huff about the United States’ decision to built a missile defense system in Europe to allegedly protect its allies from �rogue states.� Putin counters back with threats to re-aim Russia’s vast nuclear warheads at Europe and the U.S., in effect threatening to reinstate the Cold War. Meanwhile, Bushie says that the missile shield isn’t about Russia, it’s about Iran (Yeah! Iran! That’s it!). Putin offers, in that case, to develop a base jointly with the U.S. near the Iran border. This offer is refused.

Louisiana Senator William Jefferson pleads not guilty to bribery and corruption charges at his indictment, this after the feds found $90,000 stowed away in several containers in the freezer in his home.

As the summer vacation season approaches, it’s revealed that the U.S. State Department cannot keep up with demand for passports, some people waiting as much as five months or more for an expedited passport. Even having an appointment at the Passport Office doesn’t guarantee you’ll be seen. It only means you have the right to wait in line for several days in a row.

Iraq accuses the Turkish government of shelling the Kurdish area of northern Iraq because, well, Turkey just doesn’t like the Kurds and would really like to wipe them off the face of the planet.

And while we’re on Iraq, we still have an increasing death rate among U.S. soldiers, seeing the highest rate so far with over 100 in a month. The quagmire is still here, still raging out of control, and no one knows what to do about it.

All this is going on around us as of the time of this writing, yet, the media are obsessed with Paris Hilton. Fox News Channel going so far as to deploying news choppers to track her progress of leaving home and going to the courthouse. When did celebrity gossip and celebrity worship become newsworthy? More importantly, whose fault is it that this is considered newsworthy � the news outlets for leading with it, or the public for eating it up?

Personally, both groups are to blame. I put the blame on so-called �News� operations like Fox News for using stories like this to distract the American public from the real news stories of the day. If it’s news, it’s not on Fox. Only news that the Bush administration would find favorable is allowed to be broadcast on this network. This level of pandering to the neo-conservatives is sickening. The other networks are also complicit in this. Many are afraid to anger the administration.
The change over the past decade from news being a loss-leader, as it has been since television news began, to being a profit center hasn’t helped much either. Everything now is about ratings and advertising dollars. Journalistic integrity is thrown out the window.

I also put the blame, to a lesser extent, on the viewing public, because talking about issues, real issues, issues that don’t have clear-cut solutions, is deemed too hard, requiring the public to think. They don’t like to do that. Instead, they let themselves be distracted by rich girls who are only famous for being famous and their hijinx to keep themselves in the limelight.

We as a nation need to stop being distracted by the dazzling glitter of celebrity, and stop falling prey to the distracting scare tactics of fake investigative journalism (�Could school bus germs kill your child? News 3 investigates, tonight at 10.�), and focus on the hard issues at hand. Until that happens, every time there is an important genuinely newsworthy story on the news, it will most certainly be buried in endless chatter, scare tactics and celebrity gossip to distract us.