Thursday, February 18, 2010
Captured Thought: The Media Loves a Bad Story
As I was watching a recent episode of the Simpsons in which Homer and Marge went to the winter Olympics and won the gold medal in curling, a sarcastic comment was made by a sportscaster. "This is the sort of bittersweet melodrama Olympic coverage feeds on," is what he said after Marge hurt her shoulder sweeping too hard. Then it dawned on me how one of the few things I remember about the last winter Olympics is Lindsay Jacobellis's showboating incident that cost her the gold medal in snowboard cross. But it's not only sports, but all types of media, magazines especially, that envelope themselves in what is considered "trash". But then if it's trash why do people keep wanting to read about the latest development in Brangolina's relationship status? An then it occurred to me that all the people on the news are famous and have an aura of perfection surrounding them and that when these people act like normal people and make mistakes, we can relate to them. We want to see these people act human. In a sense, the media is doing us a favor by broadcasting this "trash". The media is giving us what we want, what we need. And even though we know that we shouldn't find pleasure and comfort in another's misfortune, it's what we want to read, and we get it.
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Bill,
ReplyDeleteThis post is interesting and I often think the same. I agree that the media loves "bad" stories, but I also believe that there are exceptions where the media has a keen interest in "good" stories. I think the media loves good stories and thrives on them when they're "historic." For example, similarly in the Olympics, the media thrived on Michael Phelp's quest for a record breaking number of 8 gold medals. I would argue that this "good" story "outweighed" a "bad" story of the Olympics or even of Phelps himself. Even after Phelps's marijuana controversy, people are still going to remember him most by his positives in his success at the Summer Olympics. This is what will be historic. This is why the media focused and broadcasted this longer than his controversy with drugs.
Somewhere in the middle of the media "loving stories" are runs in sports. In the 2007, NFL season, the New England Patriots finished the regular season 16-0 but lost to the New York Giants in the Superbowl. On one side, the media emphasized throughout the entire run the "good" news on how they can go for the perfect season and that would arguably classify them as maybe THE best team in history. However, once they lost, the media again exploded on the "bad" news on their defeat, or maybe it's "good" news in favor of the underdogs. Same goes with the University of Connecticut's woman's basketball team. As of now, they're on a 72 game win streak. There's controversy in the media on whether this is good or bad for womens' basketball. Does a dominant team make things boring for the media or does it make things more exciting to follow their run?
Like I said, I still agree with you. Some sort of "bad" struggle makes things more exciting for the media. Whether it's Michael Jordan's "flu game" in the 1997 playoffs, gossip about a celebrity's personal life, or other things that provide obstacles in someone's life, it makes the media's narrative more interesting. They don't want to present information describing the perfect life. Globally, the media presents "bad things" because that's the only way to get attention. They show tons of images of disasters and conflict in other regions because that's the only way to bring aid.
I think I'm walking both paths here. Although I agree with you, I think the media just likes "bigger" things. If that ends up being "bad", then so be it, but it isn't always.
As someone who aspires to be a news junkie, this was a really interesting post. I do think that a lot of people (without even realizing it) love downbeat news stories. I think it gives This celebrity is having marriage problems, this many people died here or there. Sometime's it's celebrity trash, sometimes it's earthquake trash, whatever.
ReplyDeleteThis is also the reason why Torch gets a flak from people- a lot of times we're not considered 'edgy' enough or something. However, our adviser tells us that you should only report controversy when there's controversy to be found. It's not the job of a newspaper to cause trouble, just to report it.
In conclusion, this is why tabloids are crap.