Don't Stop Till You Get Enough?
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Michael Jackson's death set off an explosion of media attention. Reporters can't seem to get enough of the "King of Pop" as they reaffirm our media's morbid obsession with celebrity death and tragedy. Journalists update often unwilling audiences with the most minor of details on Jackson's life, death, and now, his legacy. The top three stories on CNN.com for July 8th, for example, inform readers of the latest news: "Michael's Daughter: ‘Daddy has been the best,'" "Goodbye Michael: Star, brother, friend, father,'" and "Jackson still ‘King of Pop' on Billboard charts." On the same day, Fox News featured "breaking news": "Jackson's Death Sparks Fierce Debate in Congress," "Doctor Denies Giving Jackson Sedative," and "Blanket Jackson Exposed."
Analysis from the Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals that Jackson's death is effectively competing for attention with other stories such as the Iranian election and protests. For the June 22-28th week, attention to protests in Iran accounted for 19 percent of all news coverage, with Jackson's death comprising 18 percent. At its height from June 25-26th, coverage of Jackson accounted for 60 percent of all news programming, with Iran coverage dropping to 7 percent. The mass media's fixation on celebrity news necessarily desensitizes Americans to political news stories. Americans who consume greater amounts of celebrity news inevitably end up spending less time following political news.[1]
Celebrity news stories have long been most popular with wealthier, younger audiences, as well as with women and minorities.[2] In the case of coverage of Michael Jackson, a systematic review from the Pew Research Center finds that African Americans are far more likely to follow the story closely than white Americans. The Pew study finds that the rapid increase in coverage of Jackson encourages consumers to follow this story at the expense of political news. Jackson's death during the June 22-28th week was the "most closely" followed story by news audiences, finishing above political issues such as health care reform, Iran, a Congressional bill to reduce greenhouse gases, and the recent D.C. train crash.
Many journalists and academics defend the media's heavy reliance on celebrity junk food news. They claim that the media simply empowers consumers by giving them what they want - in this case increased coverage of Michael Jackson at the expense of stories on Iran, health care, and environmental conservation.
It is certainly true that the media's Jackson frenzy is captivating a small, but determined number of consumers who demand hourly updates of Jackson news. News consumers who are strongly interested in celebrity news do tend to follow these stories with greater frequency than consumers with other priorities.[3] Additionally, a sizable minority of Americans (slightly less than a third) were generally happy with the volume of Jackson coverage. However, we should never forget that the vast majority of Americans express little interest in celebrity news, despite most peoples' intimate knowledge of these stories.
In the case of Michael Jackson, 64 percent of Americans feel that the media covered his death "too much," compared to just 3 percent who said there was "too little" coverage, and 29 percent who said attention was "the right amount." Other indicators reveal a similar pattern across many celebrity news stories. Large majorities feel that junk food news is covered, including O.J. Simpson's 2007 arrest, Eliot Spitzer's 2008 prostitution scandal, the 2007 Don Imus firing, Michael Vick's 2007 dog fighting incident, 2007 coverage of celebrity starlets such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, and Ellen Degeneres' 2007 pet adoption controversy.[4]
What's going on here? How can people consistently claim that they don't want celebrity news, while these incidents consistently top the list of each week's most covered and most consumed news stories? There are a few simple answers to this question. For one, Americans don't have much choice on what stories are covered. Media corporations don't bother to ask Americans what they want to read or hear about, as these decisions are made in a top-down manner, with consumers merely reacting to news content through limited mediums such as the Nielson ratings. Celebrity news stories also turn out to be far cheaper to produce than investigative reporting, which requires more resources and longer time commitments. Media producers and owners would rather fill their time slots with inexpensive fluff than cut into their profit margins with real reporting.
On another level, most Americans understand that junk food news is toxic, but they are socialized to want these stories regardless. This is what makes the junk food analogy so appropriate. As with McDonalds or Wendy's, Americans know that consumption of celebrity news is bad for them, but they continue to watch these stories due to a lack of meaningful choice. In other words, people become addicted to these stories despite their better judgment telling them to stay away.
The power of media to socialize and indoctrinate consumers - often against their will - should not be underestimated. Young viewers who have grown up in the celebrity news era are more susceptible to this type of programming. Those under 30 years old are more likely to blame the public, rather than the media, for the prevalence of gossip news, whereas those over 30 are more likely to blame media corporations instead of the public. Growing up at a time when celebrity news was not the norm, older Americans know the difference between serious news and news without substance, and they are reacting skeptically to the growth in fluff.[5]
Many on the left - including myself - traditionally attack the mass media for keeping Americans ignorant of important political issues. To say that media corporations create apathetic audiences, and that such apathy serves their profit motives, is not a conspiracy. The goal of any corporations is to make as much money as possible, and this is historically done through top-down, one way communication of advertising. This process inherently depends on passive consumers who will not challenge the possible drawbacks of consuming advertised products (for example, the negative effects of over consuming fast food or relying on gas guzzling, polluting SUVs).
It is not the case that media corporations' primary goal is to create ignorant, depoliticized Americans. However, this is the inevitable consequence of single-minded profit motives that push junk food news at the expense of other programming. I continually encounter the problem of American political indifference in the classroom. Students are usually able to provide me with the most recent updates on the lives of celebrity superstars, but most are unaware of recent developments in Iraq, Iran, or in domestic politics. This is a dramatic contrast with my foreign students, who usually are far more interested in politics and often times more knowledgeable about American government than my American students. Sadly, most Americans are abysmally ignorant of current events, with only 20-25 percent regularly following national and international politics.[6] This doesn't have to be the case. The sooner we question the mind numbing programming promoted by corporate television, the easier it will be to mobilize citizens to care about issues that really matter.
Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University. He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010). He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edu
Notes
[1] My own statistical analysis of the public's consumption of news, drawn from a 2006 CBS public opinion poll, shows that there is a statistically significant difference between those who consume celebrity news online and those who do not. Celebrity news consumers are also less likely to regularly follow more traditional political news sources such as the evening newscasts for ABC, CBS, and NBC. The focus on online consumption of celebrity news is particularly important, since online consumers are disproportionately young, and young viewers are generally more likely to follow celebrity news than older audiences.
[2] There is strong evidence that these demographic groups are more interested in showbiz news and consume celebrity news at higher levels than other groups. The evidence of this comes, again, from analyzing the 2006 CBS public opinion poll, which finds statistically significant differences between women (compared to men), minorities (compared to whites), the young (compared to older people), and wealthier people (compared to those with less money).
[3] My statistical analysis of the 2006 CBS poll confirms the obvious: those who are interested in celebrity news are statistically more likely to follow these stories than those who are less interested.
[4] For more on the studies documenting public discontent with these celebrity stories, see the Conclusion of my book, When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent (forthcoming from Monthly Review Press in Februar 2010).
[5] Evidence for this point is seen in a poll from Pew, "Public Blames Media for Too Much Celebrity Coverage," 2 August 2007, http://people-press.org/report/346/public-blames-media-for-too-much-celebrity-coverage
[6] Although there are reasons to be optimistic about the public's ability to transcend its apathy, public ignorance remains a large problem. The lack of regular attention to national and international politics is documented at length, again, in the Conclusion of When Media Goes to War.
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an interesting observation
By McGehee, Michael at Jul 09, 2009 11:37 AM
has been the racial divide over michael jackson.
whites still largely view him as guilty of pedophilia whereas blacks take a polar opposite view.
i questioned the reason for this. do whites have access to information that blacks dont or does race/group selection play a big part in viewing others as guilty.
im real interested in sociobiology (eo wilson and robert trivers) and it is trivers theory of self-deception in the service of deceipt that i thought could shed light on this phenomena.
in an upcoming book, trivers writes:
"Deception (misleading others) is a very deep feature of life. It occurs at all levels and, it would seem, by any means possible. It tends to hide from view and is by its nature difficult to see and to study. Self-deception is even worse, hiding itself more deeply in our own unconscious minds."
my inclination on the MJ phenomena is that the cultural and historical legacy of white supremacy/privilege is playing itself out through deception. from the whites i have spoken to who think he was guilty, all object to being racist and i believe them. though i do think they have deceived themselves on just how much they identify with or exploit white supremacy/privilege. whites often identify with whites as a group and not so with non-whites. trivers had a discussion with chomsky on what they called "group think" where they talked about how groups are quick to accept the negatives of others without realizing that the cause for their view has more to do with group selection than the accuracy of the charge. and i think that is what is so observable with the MJ phenomena and explains why whites are so quick and reflexive to assume he is guilty - a lack of identification of him as being in their group, coupled with the historical legacy of white supremacy and white privilege.
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Re: an interesting observation
By Green, Chris at Jul 09, 2009 23:44 PM
I saw something on Playahata.com to the effect that the child in the first molestation case against MJ has come forward to say that his dad made him say MJ molested him because they were poor and wanted lots of money. I think Playahata.com has removed the posting and I haven't heard anything about it in the rest of the media.
Black folks have had alot of bad experiences with the judicial system so they probably are alot more sceptical about charges made against black Americans than white folks. It was like that during the OJ trial. Most white people think our justice system is fine and don't know or don't care or support the centuries old injustices against African Americans. Black Americans are often very much aware of other blacks who have been imprisoned on false charges or been victimized by police brutality or denied justice in some way. Thus it was easier for some black Americans to believe in a conspiracy against OJ because the LAPD who arrested him was and is so god-awfully racist and Mark Fuhrman, the detective who found the bloody glove, was on tape expressing very violent racist beliefs.
The most compelling evidence that I heard come out of the MJ molestation thing was that one of the kids could describe the peculiarities of MJ's genitals. That itself, of course, is not a smoking gun but certainly dosen't make MJ look well. I think what drives the motives of alot of white people viewing the MJ case is the ancient American love of demonizing and condemning sinners, real or alleged. American white people have a strain in them, probably going back to the Puritans, which gets alot of joy out of mean spirited and unfair moral indignation. Somebody like Bill O'reilly probably enjoys demonizing MJ, even though MJ was never found guilty of anything, because MJ was somebody who, however much success he enjoyed, was never quite seen as a "normal" American by white assholes like O'reilly, for the simple fact that MJ was black. And of course his eccentric "freakish" behavior and child molestation allegations gave ammunition to white assholes like O'reilly and Peter King. Assholes like O'reilly always zero in on black people who do wrong and don't seem to get quite as worked up at white people who do similar or worse things.
MJ himself was a pretty inoffensive figure for the most part. I mean he came out and claimed that Sony was treating him racist in 2001 or 02 but some people laughed at him because he had been such an un-complaining employee of the corporate music industry for so long and never shied away from the embraces of white corporate executives. It was only when his career had long been in the dumps that he started speaking out about music industry racism
MSNBC devoted almost non-stop coverage of MJ in the days after his death. Olbermann droned on and on in his self-important way about MJ. MSNBC executives probably ordered that the coverage of MJ be wall to wall. They wanted to get the maximum ratings out of the situation and they had a golden opportuntiy with lots of MJ fans turning on the TV looking for coverage. I remember reading something interesting in Edward Herman's book "The Myth of the Liberal Media." Herman pointed out that if a network loses even a slight rating point in a given time-slot to a competitor, then they lose tons of advertising money. Advertisers start buying advertising at the competitor that got a scintilla of a point higher than the other network.
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