Week 6 Blog Prompt

Read up on the Rupert Murdoch phone scandal. You can find some links (from TIME online) I posted up in Week 6, as well as read up on the Newsweek coverage of the news. In relation to the news coverage on the scandal, answer the question: "The news media should be blamed for the unhealthy paparazzi culture and going to the extremes for sensational news. How far do you agree?"

I do not totally agree with this statement.  Firstly, I would like to give a brief definition on the word "culture". A certain culture arises in a particular society and the only way that it can emerge is when the entire society  embraces it, and of course, this would involve the masses of the public. 

The paparazzi culture is one that is fanatic and obsessed about the private stories of public figureheads and celebrities. The news media has merely stepped in to serve the purpose of obtaining these sensational and juicy pieces of news for the public through their reporters whose profession is to gather and provide information to the public . Supply matches demand, as we know, when  the demand for something is high, there must also be enough supply of it to match that. In this case, the pursuer of such news is the public and commoners, which forms the bulk of the society.  If they do not crave for these, there would not even be a need for the news media to sieve out private news of others. In other words, the news media is merely executing the wishes of the public. And why is these news sensational ? This is because they attract the overwhelmingly. And why is this so? It all boils down to the innate human curiosity about others. You might argue that origin of this paparazzi culture is the news media since they might have targeted this human flaw and started publishing relevant articles. However, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango, the point is that if the public could resist or denounce these, there would be no more continuity of these and ultimately, there would never be a paparazzi culture formed too. Thus, I would hold the paparazzi culture as an natural element that shapes part of our contemporary news culture instead of the creation of the news media, since its roots are entrenched human characteristics. I believe that the prevalent existence of the paparazzi culture had in turn stimulated stiffer competition among the different news publishers to provide more juicy news to the public in order to earn popularity in the public. One example on an outcome of this would of course be the Rupert Murdoch hacking scandal.

In any case, the law could also be said to be responsible for this culture. Indeed, there are very few laws in countries that restrict or regulate the publication of such news. You might argue that the slack regulations in a country has allowed such culture to thrive. I agree with this to a large extent, as the crux of the problem still lies in the public. It would definitely be a bane to a country’s government if they were to suppress the will of the public majority . Furthermore, they would still not be able to eradicate that yearning in the human’s heart eternally. Nonetheless, such laws can still be implemented as they can more or less still alleviate the problems brought about by this , and this can be done in the hope that the prolonged absence of such news in the media can make the culture die down eventually.

In a nutshell,  I do not think that the news media should be entirely blamed for this paparazzi culture, and that stringent laws may  be enforced to curb this.

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