I’m not saying that the news shouldn’t have any stories on celebrities.  Hell, you need that kind of fluff to break up the monotony of depressing stories of various calamities occurring around the world at any given moment.  The problem I’ve found is that REAL news is being put on the back-burner so that we can learn whether or not Christina Aguilera’s baby is going to be a boy or girl.  That is not news, and should only be relegated to the likes of “Access Hollywood” or “Entertainment Tonight,” not CNN or MSNBC.  When O.J. Simpson was charged for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, that’s news.  When Martha Stewart goes to jail for insider trading, that’s news.  Even when Britney Spears loses her mind, shaves her head and goes postal with an umbrella, that to me is a guilty pleasure that I consider news worthy.  There is a place for celebrity stories in the news, the problem I have is having to sift through the incessant celebrity gossip stories to see what is going on with the BP oil spill.

It’s a bizarre phenomenon that has taken place over the past decade in mainstream news.  Sure, you can turn over to the BBC to get your pure, uncut news fix, but is it so much to ask to get REAL news from our own country?  Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about why there is so much celebrity fluff on the news, and I keep coming back to 9/11.  The fact that we were inundated with so many horrendous visuals during that time period, it makes me wonder if the news stations felt the need to make things “lighter.”

At the risk of making a terrible analogy, think of the news as a cup of coffee.  The REAL news being the untouched, robust mug of French Roast.  Then you add cream and sugar, aka the celebrity drivel.  That cream and sugar changes the whole dynamic of the coffee, and before you know it, your pure French Roast has been taken over, sullied by the cream and sugar, and you can hardly taste the ACTUAL coffee anymore.  Well, I think it’s time to go back to drinking black coffee.  After all, who doesn’t want a little more hair on their chest?  Apparently, I’m not the only one sick of the celebrity news saturation because according to a study conducted by the “Pew Research Center for the People and Press” in 2007, 40% of the public thought that celebrity news gets too much attention from the media.

We’re all big boys and big girls right?  Sure, there are horrible calamity’s that take place on a daily basis around the globe, but it’s reality, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to handle that.  If you don’t want REAL news to harsh your buzz, turn over to E! or watch a rerun of “The Real Housewives of New York City.”  For the rest of us, it’s time we demand that our news be actually newsworthy again instead of the facade that is has seemingly become.

http://people-press.org/report/362/too-much-celebrity-news-too-little-good-news

As a journalist, reporting on divorce – or worse, the aftermath – has become just about as common as reading a release on the latest reality star’s jaunt into the music industry. Neither is particularly pleasant, but both also captivate readers in a kind of train-wreck curiosity. The scary part about it all is that readers often begin taking sides, analyzing public marriages and divorces as though the public personas they are familiar with — the red carpet smiles, the publicity-driven acts of charity and the bouts with the paparazzi — are anywhere near the genuine essence of the marriages they read about.

In the public eye, divorce has become a speed bump. It’s a tedious process that is more of a hassle than an emotional ordeal. Time used to be that divorces were a rarity, deemed a sort of failure on both persons’ parts; now it is an ugly sometimes-necessity for people who know better than to try to work it out. What this teaches children, and subconsciously ingrains into the minds of young adults everywhere, is that there is an easy alternative to the strife of marriage: get out.

This is an age of quick-fixes, and if it’s okay for celebrities to count their number of spouses on their two hands, then it must not be that terrible to split from what troubles us as well. Critics would argue that this is because marriage as an institution is outdated, that some people would rather have long partnerships than get married because of the many implications marriage holds. I would counter that the main reason divorce is now no longer viewed as a terrible fate is because of the pace of life. Change needs to be instant — think plastic surgery and crash diets — and there isn’t much that can’t be fixed with a little money. This means that, in a strange way, divorce has become a weird status symbol of sorts. How much did she get after the settlement? How much did they invest into the case? People have to have a certain standard of living to be able to afford divorce procedures.

In reality (and not reality TV), however, divorce shouldn’t be such a callous business transaction — and it’s usually not. When I think about the children who have to endure the pains of back-and-forth battles between their parents, I think and know that their own take on marriage down the line will be severely impacted. Distrust or lack of commitment become the way for them to approach the once-sacred institution, and the cycle continues on.

Scary thought.

As proven by way of reality TV shows, society is fascinated with watching other people’s lives onscreen. Or perhaps more gratuitous still, watching an altered version of themselves onscreen and then mimicking that in real life. It’s a dangerous blurring between real life and the glamorous pictures on the other side of the glass, but it’s also unfortunately all too common. Divorce as we know it today, divorce as I read and write about on a daily basis, is the modern common cold — easily caught, a hassle to deal with, swiftly dealt with.