Whitney Houston died. That’s right, the spectacle of song made her dramatic exit at the age of 48; chances are your comatose fish knew about it. Like Michael Jackson, news of Houston’s death is omnipresent in the media and suffocating subsequent stories. American media is infatuated with celebrity stories, but when they die, we explode. The coverage of this and other celebrity deaths have been sensationalized to a point of mania and become more diluted the longer we’re bludgeoned to death by the story. Why is it we’re so obsessed with underwhelming stories?
Houston’s story is intriguing. She binged on cocaine and erratic behavior while her voice bellowed sounds of heaven and life. While “intriguing” is sometimes enough for coverage, the ubiquity of her death in the media is puzzling. Factors to consider a story newsworthy include:
- Impact or consequence- the greater the impact, the more newsworthy
- Conflict- humans love reading about war
- Proximity- how relevant the story is to the reader’s geographical location
- Prominence- famous people are more newsworthy
- Timeliness- if it happened a week ago, it’s nonexistent
- Unusualness- “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” (Hunter S Thompson)
Houston was a prominent figure who died an unusual death. Now that she’s passed, her fame has been inflated to the likes of the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis. Obviously, this was not so. Houston’s talent was great, but she will never be considered an iconic classic like the aforementioned. It seems we’re trying to justify this media charade. I think it’s time to reflect on the news industry’s responsibility to covering what is best for public interest. This mainstream media bias is encouraging coverage of what everyone else is already reporting, distracting the public from any meaningful news. We’re misplacing our values into hype and degrading our culture to trivialization.
