Hostages of non-news

PRETEND THAT YOU ARE an editor of a major news distribution agency such as a newspaper, television network, or cable news show. Your job is to exercise news judgment and decide what stories your readers or viewers must know to have a pretty good idea of the important issues of the day--the stories that influence and perhaps even change their lives economically, politically, socially, and physically. How much space or time do you give to the following items?

Radio personality Don Imus' racist and misogynistic comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Who is the father of model Anna Nicole Smith's baby? Actor Paris Hilton's jail time for drunk driving. A NASA astronaut accused of trying to kidnap a romantic rival for a space shuttle pilot's affections. An enraged Alec Baldwin's threatening voice-mail message to his daughter. The Duke University lacrosse scandal. Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho's video manifesto. The day's casualties and events on the ground in the Iraqi War. The positions of declared candidates running for the presidency. The debate over the President's U.S. war policy with Iraq and the decision to extend deployments. The bombing of a cafeteria in Baghdad. The takeover of Congress by Democrats. The Supreme Court's decision on partial abortion. The controversy over U.S. immigration policy. The backlash concerning the firing of U.S. Federal attorneys.

If you emphasized the downfall of Imus, the saga of Anna Nicole Smith from death to funeral to paternity, the astronaut love triangle, the escapades of Paris Hilton, and Alec Baldwin's private phone messages, you hereby are sworn in as the producer of any popular cable or celebrity news program. If you played up those stories, then added the Duke University lacrosse scandal and endless coverage of the Virginia Tech killer's manifesto, you would make a pretty good TV news producer. If you put those stories on the back burner and emphasized the war in Iraq, the Supreme Court decision, Congress, the U.S. Justice Department, immigration, and the presidential candidates, then you have no business working for TV news or blogging on the worldwide Internet. You more likely are to be working as an editor on some newspaper struggling to grab your audience's attention away from the celebrity-driven electronic news of the day.

Do not fret if all you remember is the celebrity-driven news. That is what dominates most of the television news programs you watch--from the 24-hour cable news networks to the celebrity-driven pseudo-news programs to the newsweeklies such as People, Us Weekly, Star, and the National Enquirer to the countless Internet news and gossip blogs that could not get enough of Imus and Smith and Baldwin.

The endless repetition of these mostly non-news stories overwhelmed anyone trying to figure out what was going on in the world on any given day. Few people heard the original Imus remark as it was made. In years past, it quickly would have been forgotten because it was said on live radio (as similar Imus comments have been through the years). However, every news media outlet kept repeating it over and over until it was almost impossible not to have heard and memorized it. Then came endless commentary using the Imus firing to solve every problem from racism to indecency on the airwaves.

By repeating Imus' crude remark, Baldwin's intemperate rants, and the like, isolated and unimportant events are given significance. Instead of recognizing that these stories should be dismissed as aberrations, various interest groups turn them into rallying cries to make sure this kind of thing "can never happen again."

News commentators have become the most egregious offenders of misinformation. They take a relatively minor outrage (such as Imus' stupid comment) or a unique tragedy (such as the Virginia Tech killings), and turn it into a commentary on the ruination of national morality. Imus is fired and thus racism is no more. Baldwin is disgraced and good parenting is possible again. A killer repeatedly is analyzed and dissected, thus preventing a similar event from ever reoccurring.

This kind of overreaction fueled by the news media seemingly without judgment or responsibility can have serious repercussions. When Janet Jackson exposed a bit of breast for less than a second during the Super Bowl broadcast a few years ago, that exposure was repeated endlessly on cable and sports programs for weeks. The subsequent public outrage fueled the Federal Communications Commission to go after TV programmers with an indiscriminate ax, creating enormous fines for something called "indecency." What the FCC is doing may well be illegal since its sanctions have yet to be tested properly in the courts, but it is being done nevertheless.

There now are cries after the Imus incident to censor any phrase or comment that may be considered obscene or politically incorrect. Individual groups representing almost every social, political, and religious minority have jumped on this bandwagon. The irony is that most of the biting social comment and humor in this country relies on indecent language and politically incorrect statements. The most critically acclaimed comics in American humor--the late Lenny Brace and Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Chris Rock, to name a few--rely on profanity and ethnic humor to make their explosive points, offering commentary seldom heard anywhere else.