Thursday, September 20, 2007
Extra tid bits from my interviews with the hot shot pros
This is pretty interesting, but I wasn't able to fit it into the story .....When I was speaking to Gary Morgan (gossip writer), I asked him what he thought the most unethical wasyto get a story was (just for kicks and giggles...I was interested in what he could possibly say). He said that some tabloid magazines pay inside sources to set celebrities up...case in point...the enquirer paid an insider to call up child services on a certain celebrity (who was innocent)....knowing that by law child services would have to investigate the situation....this would enable the enquirer to write (and it wouldn't be wrong) that the celeb was involved in a child abuse scandal.....how horrible is that!! He said that things like this happen all the time.
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This just illustrates the depths to which gossip columnists will sink to get a story. In point of fact, their work takes the word "story" to the level of fiction we do not tend to ascribe to a piece of journalism. I've always hated tabloid journalism, and the idea that it continues to sell so well is a real testament to the ignorance of our society. Why do people continue to care so much about the personal lives of celebrities?
The people who read tabloids do so because they want to be entertained...its sad really. We love to watch other people fail or make mistakes...especially celebrities. People (and the media) love to build them up and then repeatedly tear them down.
Unethical! But the flip side is what does a journalist do if she or he witnesses what might be criminal conduct in the course of pursuing a story? What if you were doing a story on a star and saw him/her abusing kids? Though we often think of the Janet Cooke scandal at the Post as a plagiarism problem, think of the Post's *initial* decision: a 10-year-old is a heroin user, his habit abetted by his addict mother. Shouldn't social services have been called even though Cooke had guaranteed the mom anonymity. Of course, later on we learned the mom and the kid had been made up. But at what point would you take back a promise to protect a source?
Unethical! But the flip side is what does a journalist do if she or he witnesses what might be criminal conduct in the course of pursuing a story? What if you were doing a story on a star and saw him/her abusing kids? Though we often think of the Janet Cooke scandal at the Post as a plagiarism problem, think of the Post's *initial* decision: a 10-year-old is a heroin user, his habit abetted by his addict mother. Shouldn't social services have been called even though Cooke had guaranteed the mom anonymity. Of course, later on we learned the mom and the kid had been made up. But at what point would you take back a promise to protect a source?
Unethical! But the flip side is what does a journalist do if she or he witnesses what might be criminal conduct in the course of pursuing a story? What if you were doing a story on a star and saw him/her abusing kids? Though we often think of the Janet Cooke scandal at the Post as a plagiarism problem, think of the Post's *initial* decision: a 10-year-old is a heroin user, his habit abetted by his addict mother. Shouldn't social services have been called even though Cooke had guaranteed the mom anonymity. Of course, later on we learned the mom and the kid had been made up. But at what point would you take back a promise to protect a source?
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