A warped reality.
Tragedy is devastating to almost everyone on this earth. But there are some people, morbid and inhuman, who revel in it. These include terrorists, devil worshippers, and…journalists. I happen to fall into the third category. And this little observation has never been more clear to me than when John Travolta’s 16 year-old son passed away last Friday. The newsroom went into frenzy-mode. Phones ringing off the hook, fact checkers scurrying about, and newsroom bottom-feeders *urghhmm* checking the archives for footage of the child who left this earth at too early an age. It was a good news day for the entertainment organization at which I work (I use the term “work” here loosely, in reference to the fact that I am not being paid. But “intern” just sounds too…well, too obsequious).
The tragic death of the son of one of Hollywood’s most famed fathers made me realize that news organizations (entertainment, hard news, or otherwise) thrive on tragedy. I guess I always knew this to some extent, but seeing it in full force brought this twisted reality into an increasingly dim light. There’s something almost pathological about the fact that humans revel in other peoples’ trauma. And I don’t think the media are to blame. While we are certainly proponents of this, we are only feeding the beast. That is to say, we are giving (and successfully, I think) audiences what they want.
But why is it that we are so fascinated and interested in others’ pain and suffering? (Especially when it comes to celebrities?)
Does it demystify them? Does it make them “like us”? Does seeing other people in grief somehow help to psychologically mitigate our own problems?
It just seems a bit warped to me that it becomes a good day for newsmakers (ie. ratings = advertisers = money) when someone dies. And this, unlike my other observations, rings true from Hollywood to Poughkeepsie. But of course, when it’s poor, non-white others doing the dying, no one seems to care.
