News as Entertainment

The somewhat new phenomenon of “News as Entertainment” and how this affects media consumers is of great interest to me. Since the advent of “yellow journalism” and “The Penny Press,” techniques of sensationalism have been used to create stories and sell newspapers. Readers want to read interesting stories and be entertained while simultaneously learning about what’s happening in the world. Is this possible? Television today is full of “news” programs that report the latest redundant stories on celebrity gossip and pregnancies. These programs are all about flashiness and attractive images to get viewers hooked and keep them watching. Celebrity news programs like these are the ultimate rechanneling of the sensationalist techniques used by yellow journalists decades ago. The unfortunate part is that these sensationalist techniques have actually made the passage through to hard news stories on real channels such as CNN, Fox, and NBC. A few months ago, I was watching the 2008 election primaries on CNN. I watched the Oregon primaries unfold minute by minute on the TV screen in front of me. I’m not usually an avid TV watcher and was quite taken aback at how the election was approached on CNN. I felt like I was watching a horse race of a Ali vs. Foreman fight rather than the most important election so far in my lifetime. The coverage was all about glitz and glam, “Hilary vs. Obama,” I felt as thought this was more like ESPN than anything else. I started thinking about why the election was being covered like this. People want to watch the elections and they can watch them on a variety of cable channels. CNN was obviously competing with channels such as Fox News, for the highest election week ratings. Just like any other show, it was be attractive and flashy to captivate audiences, and most importantly, entertain them. I felt that CNN’s main goal was not to inform me about what was going on, but to entertain me and keep me hooked to their station with sensationalist techniques. This just shows how the idea of entertainment as news, and news as entertainment, has taken to a whole new frontier.