Celebrity journalism is king of the tabloids bringing in readers and hits online but is it just an easy way of generating a following, readership or fast hits. The internet is littered with sites dedicated to the subject of celebrity gossip but many people argue this does not amount to quality journalism and not how the profession is meant to be utilized.

Now days all publications seem to have a gossip section that is growing by the year even in non tabloid newspapers. It was not so long ago that the Guardian newspaper broke it’s own ban on paparazzi pictures to print photos of Wayne Rooney on his Stag weekend. The argument for this type of story is so often that If the Guardian didn’t run the story somebody else would.

Even the Guardian was forced to admit that it’s most popular story on Guardian.co.uk for a some time was the story about Nick Cleggs admissions about his Sexual history. In a Guardian story ‘@future of journalism: what do we do with celebrity news’ one of their writers Hugh Muir explains “The rule is we follow not who they are but what they have done. They shouldn’t just appear because they are famous, but if they say something funny or interesting. It’s a qualitative judgment,”

The lesson here is that it’s hard for any paper to try and match what it thinks readers want with what they actually do. The public are asking for stories about personalities they view as celebrity, they want to know what they wear, where they go and of course who are they sleeping with and publications releasing these stories are just fulfilling that need.

The real issue is so often what constitutes news and what constitutes the public interest. As in does this type of journalism really conform to the journalistic responsibility of serving the public good. In recent times celebrities have been able to acquire a super-Injunction to stop the release of a story.

In McQuails Journalism and Society he addresses this issue ‘In everyday journalistic practice, when disputes arise between news media and those on whom they report, the question that most often arises is whether a specific piece of contested reporting can be considered a matter of genuine public concern, affecting wider interests, or something in the private and personal sphere (e.g. of a scandalous or sexual character) that is only designed to attract audience attention.’ (McQuail, 2013: 32)

Celebrities have been exposed in the publications on drug use, their sex lives and other personal affairs that have become public interest because thats how they seem. In the famous situation of Ryan Giggs who obtained a super-injunction to cover up an affair he was having, this upset the press who immediately went out and exposed a second affair to counter act him, arguing the public had a right to know. The thinking behind this type of situation is that freedom to report can be justified where a true public interest can be found despite the harm it causes individuals.

‘What constitutes harm is another debatable topic, it is generally agreed that celebrities loose a large part of their personal lives to the public sphere as is the drawback of celebrity, a concept in itself and a part of living a publicised life. The press decides how much publicity an individual or organisation receives with larger amounts thrusting the actors from privately driven lives to public ones. ‘ (Wiltshire, 2014)

I personally would rather not work as a journalist if my job was to write celebrity gossip under the dubious title of news. In my opinion this is not what the term public interest or a journalists responsibility toward it was intended to protect. There are plenty of sites dedicated to celebrity gossip and thats where this type of story should stay, rather then clogging up the pages of our newspapers.

References

Kiss, J. (2008). @ Future of Journalism: What do we do with celebrity news?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2008/jun/18/futureofjournalismwhatdo [Accessed 8 Jan. 2015].

McQuail, D. (2013). Journalism and society. Los Angeles, Calif. ; London: SAGE.

Wiltshire, C. (2014). Journalism and society a conceptual analysis