It is almost impossible to use any form of media without seeing salacious (and often incorrect) “news” stories about celebrities. Unless the writers have actual connections to a celebrity, their stories generally focus on whatever will garner the biggest reaction so that their sites can get the most hits or so that more people will buy their magazines. For instance, they see that the internet is in love with a male celebrity, so they say he has a girlfriend. And if he actually does have a girlfriend, they spread the rumor that he’s leaving her to have a romantic rendezvous in Fes with Keira Knightly. Is that true? Probably not, but either way it is not the writers’ or the public’s business.

These stories are asinine for many reasons. For one, celebrities are human beings. Why does society care more about what they do than what any other group does? Surely governmental acts should receive more attention than the latest Kardashian drama. For one, they actually affect our daily lives and what will happen to us in the future.

Beyond that, these writers and the paparazzi that are part and parcel to them often invade the privacy of these people in order to get stories or pictures. They, specifically the paparazzi, follow celebrities, getting money for taking pictures and reporting on their whereabouts, usually without their permission. They crowd them and their children and try to force them to react. All for money and to feed the populace’s strange, voyeuristic need to know what their favorite celebrity is doing at any given moment.

Not only is this wrong and a violation of human decency, but also it is ridiculous on many levels. First of all, the person is not necessarily the art. It is completely okay to take the art personally and comment on it. That’s what it is there for. But it is not OK to obsess over the personal life of the artist as one would obsess over the art. For instance, George R.R. Martin’s fans are occasionally up-in-arms because he does things like eat dinner in restaurants rather than spend every possible moment writing the next book in the "Game of Thrones" series. While I feel their pain, Martin is a human being and is allowed as many breaks from writing his book as he likes. He is not a servant to the public. He deserves to eat dinner in peace without being photographed by paparazzi looking to rile up fans. For all those paparazzi know, he’s taking a brainstorming break over food. Perhaps he’ll get an idea for an interesting character death over the way his potatoes are mashed.

The point that I am trying to make is that no one knows what goes on in a person’s life except for that person. Therefore, unless he or she is doing truly heinous things like killing people, raping them, trafficking them or what have you (which the paparazzi is unlikely to discover), they should be allowed to have privacy. We should critique and appreciate their art/work, rather than obsess over their daily lives. Trust me, they are just like everyone else; they just have jobs that thrust them into the limelight, willingly or not.

Worse yet, this fixation with celebrities leads to ignorance about what is going on in the world, bad and good. If, instead of obsessing over celebrities in the hopes of getting money or hits on their sites, these “journalists” tried to share the truth about the world, their stories could actually matter. This doesn’t have to mean traveling the world. They could even tailor the subject to their interests.

For instance, instead of talking about Rihanna in a see-through dress, they could write articles about where her dress came from. What is the designer’s aesthetic? Who picked the stuff that went into the fabric? Who made the fabric? Who sewed it together? I know that there is a story there and it should be heard. It doesn’t have to be an attack on Rihanna or even about her, because she probably doesn’t know the answers to these questions either. I mean, I know that my jacket is cotton, but I have no idea who or what picked the cotton or who works in the factory that wove it together. A journalist could get the resources to find the answers. It is important to know them, because if someone is being mistreated in the process, we have a responsibility to try to help them. If not us, then who will? Fashion is not as important as human rights.

If the writers are really interested in the lives of other people, maybe they should change their focus. They could report on the effectiveness of healthcare from the people who receive it; the ones who don’t have enough money to scare people into taking good care of them. Of course, health care workers should always take care of their patients, regardless of their monetary status, but that is not always the case. They could also report on how owners of minimum wage businesses sometimes take advantage of their employees because they know that the employees have nowhere else to go. Conversely, they could write about how people help each other in rural farming communities and how that can be applied to urban areas.

There is a plethora of important, local topics that are being drowned under the weight of celebrity gossip. Not only is this attempting to justify violating privacy, but it is also fostering ignorance.