News & Politics As Spectacle

Opinion by Gilbert Mercier, NEWS  JUNKIE POST

Michael Jackson has dominated news coverage since his death on June 25, the other “big story” covered by the mainstream media was the resignation of Sarah Palin.

While major world events are unfolding at a frantic pace such as US troops withdrawing from Iraq, a coup in Honduras, violent unrest in China and the aftermath of the Iranian election, it is positively puzzling that the US media would pay so much attention to stories that have more or less no impact on the big picture of world affairs.

The King of Pop death saga, alone, accounted for 30 percent of the airtime on network news and 28 percent on cable news last week. As far as the network news, the morning shows spent 56 percent of their airtime on Jackson. For the second week in a row Michael Jackson made more news than President Obama, he registered as a lead news-maker in 14 percent of the stories as opposed to 4 percent for President Obama.

The Sarah Palin story of surprising resignation took 13 percent of the news coverage in the period from July 3rd to July 5th.

Meanwhile, the US troops withdrawal from Iraq’s cities only received 6 percent of the coverage, the new offensive of US Marines in Afghanistan just got 5 percent. After topping world news two weeks ago with 19 percent, the coverage of the situation in Iran fell to a meager 4 percent.

It is symptomatic that two stories (Jackson’s death and Palin’s resignation) that should have been treated as minor side stories by the media took so much attention away from news stories that are not purely entertainment. It is certainly another sad statement about the lack of real reporting in America.

The line between news, politics and showbiz is now completely blurred  in the US mainstream media. How could the death of a pop star matter more than the one of the architect of the Vietnam war, or the political titillation provided by Sarah Palin matter more than Iran or a coup in Honduras? It is only the case because media outlets in this country are only consistent at one thing: Catering to their audience’s common lowest denominator.

The statistics  from this article are from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), the PEJ works in association with the Pew Research Center to track news stories in all media on a weekly basis.