With tabloids like TMZ and People Magazine, it can be easy to get swept up with keeping up with your favorite celebrities. But if you really think about it, why would we want to fuel an industry that only focuses on digging and prying into the lives of individuals who the public has deemed "famous". It isn't healthy for the celebrities, the reporters themselves, or even the public to give in to the cycle of meaningless media-stalking.
What is Tabloid Journalism?
Tabloid Journalism is a form of news that focuses on the sensational and the extreme rather than rationale and informative stories. In its core, it doesn't sound like something that needs to be stopped and maybe at one point in time it was okay. However, it has devolved into nothing more than gossip and these reporters will stop at nothing to get their hands on it.
It has become a blemish on the face of Journalism. In the age of social media especially, it's hard enough for normal people to keep their private lives as they should be... private. So just imagine how much more difficult it would be as a celebrity constantly being followed by paparazzi who will stop at nothing to dig up dirt. On many occasions, celebrities have even had to file lawsuits in order to stop the constant stalking from the man behind a camera desperate for a story.
I'm sure we all remember episodes of TMZ where the entire goal is to fabricate a story from something they may have seen a celebrity doing. Like we see one celebrity in oversized clothing and immediately the tabloids report that she's pregnant.
Why it needs to stop.
Besides the ramifications that Tabloid Journalism has on celebrities with no sense of privacy, it isn't healthy as a reporter to devote your entire life to someone else's. Not judging anyone who finds their career in reporting for tabloids (you do, you sweetheart) but I believe as a writer that there's more out there to reporting than just gossiping.
We often pay so much attention to the lives of others and the lives of celebrities in order to escape our own but it just isn't healthy. It's fun at the time I admit to see what Kim K's up to or to follow T. Swift's latest relationship but I think if your focus is stalking the lives of celebrities, you need a MAJOR reality check. Tabloid Journalism has ruined the industry. When I say I want to get in the field of journalism the immediate response is always "Oh so you want to write for something like People Magazine?"
NO.
I want to share important news from my perspective with the world around me. I want to enrich the lives of others instead of slashing the image of people I'll never know. Tabloid Journalism is a toxic industry that only focuses on the outcome and profits of selling a photo, completely disregarding the lives of the people involved. Put down the camera, pick up a pen, and write something that matters for a change.
