Is there a disturbing trend towards tabloid style news items taking precedence over the real news?  Just a few weeks ago the possibility that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had broken up was in our six pm news bulletins.  Don’t get me wrong I have been known to read the odd gossip magazine but a good diet is all about balance, variety and moderation. 

Dee Dee Myers’ piece in Vanity Fair discusses trivialisation of news as she examines the Tiger Woods story.

The entire country stops for Tiger yet when President Obama makes more important announcements the country barely pauses for breath. Her article concludes with the fact that finally the National Enquirer has been deemed eligible for a Pulitzer Prize. Now that is real news.

The Tiger Woods saga highlights the potential crisis we are facing in the world of news – that of tabloid style stories stopping the real news stories taking center stage. Rosemary McLeod’s column in the Sunday Star Times was right on the money.   

Today’s Toyota story relating to their faulty vehicle accelerators is as important as the collapse of Enron, yet was second or third in the morning news items.  The bigger story was a claim that Air New Zealand has a culture of excess drinking despite facts to the contrary being communicated clearly by their CEO. (Declaration of interest here, we do provide PR support to Air New Zealand.)

Given Tiger’s speech and Robin Brooke’s Close Up interview, is Performance Media a new art form?  For audiences this is something we can watch and critique more easily than substantive news? In Tiger’s case we seem entirely focused on how he, and his team, is handling this crisis and how genuine the apology is.  All know his speech was scripted, rehearsed and stage managed. 

If the media and public know this, then who is to blame – why did the media cover it?  For the simple reason they knew they could get an audience because it is just the sort of thing we love to watch.  In today’s commercially competitive environment what will sell is what will make the news.

How can we make sure our media diet is balanced without it being so boring we simply gorge on junk or become undernourished and miss out on essential news and information that could be more relevant to our lives?

Tags: air new zealand, Close Up, John Key, Media diet, National Enquirer, Pulitzer Prize, Robin Brooke, Rosemary McLeod, SST, Sunday Star Times, Tabloid, Tabloid media, Tiger Woods, Toyota, Vanity Fair

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Brand, Journalism, Media landscape, PR Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.