BRITNEY Spears's haircut, no matter how extravagant, is not newsworthy. News delivers pertinent information about recent events to a large audience so that as a society, people can be more informed about the events that affect them. Clearly, a haircut is not news because it has an affect on only one person: the individual who received the trim. However, since news conglomerates such as CNN and Fox News have decided to dedicate prime news time to her buzz cut, it is once again time to evaluate the downfall of modern news companies.
Every time I see a person reading a tabloid, a little part of me dies. That mother, sitting in a hair salon, could be reading a book on how to be a better parent or how to invest wisely for retirement. For some reason, people love reading about lifestyles they will never have and actors and actresses they will never meet because society is superficially obsessed with money and pretty people. This obsession causes the shift from loving artists for their work in movies and vocal studios into loving them for their private lives.
While tabloids have the legal right to cover the private lives of celebrities, news companies must hold themselves to a higher standard. I am not arguing that "entertainment" is not news, because the release of a new music album or movie has large effects on the economy, and therefore proves itself newsworthy. However, Britney Spears's private decision to shave her head neither warrants nor deserves the incredible amount of attention that it has received, especially with soldiers currently fighting in a foreign country, hostile nuclear threats abroad, and state legislations debating whether cancer-preventing vaccines promote sexual promiscuity.
While the entertainment business is newsworthy because of its gigantic economic implications, the paparazzi overstep the bounds of news coverage when they follow entertainment industry leaders into the private realm. With this in mind, real news networks must distance themselves from the work of tabloid reporters to uphold journalistic integrity. Just as the president of a corporation has the right to go home to his or her family at the end of the workday, celebrities have the right to a certain level of privacy when they are not on stage. The whole world saw the devastating effects of mob-like camera crews in late August of 1997 when a fleet of paparazzi motor cycles chasing Princess Diana caused a high-speed car chase that ended in her death. Yet blind adoration for the rich causes people to ignore what negative affects constant attention has on the celebrities these people love so much.
While deadly instances of paparazzi attention are rare, the video of Britney buzzing her hair demonstrates that someone follows her almost everywhere she goes. Britney also fell victim to scrutiny from the public when she drove with her baby, Sean Preston, in her lap. While questions of her parenting abilities flew around in newspapers for the next few days, no one seemed to think of the countless short trips that parents make every day with young children improperly fastened or the many parents that abuse their children in much worse ways than Britney driving with Sean in her lap. How can Fox and CNN become willing participants in such celebrity stalking and degrade themselves with even the slightest mention of "tabloid trash" stories without destroying their credibility on larger stories?
The problem with large news corporations reporting on such minor events as celebrity haircuts is that the overall quality of news suffers. It somehow legitimizes the invasion of privacy on a new level, not reserved to sleazy paparazzi reporters but to prime-time network anchors. While the main news channels should report on entertainment in reference to box office numbers and upcoming concerts and awards ceremonies, they most certainly should not follow actors and other celebrities into their lives that are completely separate and irrelevant to their work.
This is not a column praising or condemning celebrities or their importance, but one concerning the responsibility of news organizations to deliver important stories with societal implications to the public. If news continues to become indistinguishable from tabloids, the respectability of news in general will fall. Then, when news organizations such as CNN and Fox broadcast significant stories, they seem less important to the people and not receive the attention they deserve.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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