What we are not told does not influence us more than what we are told. When we are informed about something, we tend to put more emphasis on it than before even if we knew it, but no one was talking about it. When media houses tell us about a celebrity’s life, the kind of car he or she drives, his or her dressing code and type of a house he or she lives in, we tend to copy his or her lifestyle. You will find many young people dressing like the famous musicians, behaving like them and even trying to imitate the way they talk after they are informed about them. In many cases, you will find that many people tend to do something after they have been told about it, not because they never knew about it before but because somebody is talking about it. For example, many people know that terrorist groups such as ISIS and AL Qaeda exist, but when there is no media house is talking about them, very few people will be concerned about them (Annik Dubied, 2014). The young people know that joining terrorist groups is not good, but they still join them, but when media houses and politicians start talking about them and warning people against joining them, the number of young people joining those terrorist groups reduces. What we are told seemed to have more impacts in our lives than what we are not told. When we are told about something, we become curious to know more or to find out why we are told not to use it. In many some instances, you will find that when media start talking about a given type of drugs and its effects, the young people who used not to take that kind of drug begins to use it due to the curiosity of experiencing what people are talking about.
The media coverage nowadays is all about celebrity lives and very little on pressing issues concerning the country. The media houses concentrate more on what celebrity are wearing, eating and who they are dating. The main reason why media nowadays are covering stories of public figures and celebrities is that people like to be informed about musicians, Hollywood actors, and footballers. Very few people will be so much interested in the article posted in a daily newspaper about terrorists like Al Qaeda group, ISIS, and Al-Shabaab (Wicks PG, 2007). The media houses are in business and competition is very stiff due to many media houses that are popping up every day. Therefore, every media house is trying to attract as more customer as they can, and the only way to ensure they win the hearts of their customers is by providing what they want. Celebrity news get high attention from news media than any other news. This has made the media houses to turn their attention to celebrity to make their customers happy. It is disturbing to see that people are more interested in celebrity life more than serious issues of national concern. Police officers who risk their life to protect citizens have nobody to care about, no one is interested about the sacrifices the soldiers are making to protect the life of citizens, but what is more important to people is lives of celebrities who have a minimal impact in our lives. I think as much as we blame media houses for concentrating on celebrities, we should know that they publish news for readers and they have to give them what they want. The main problem I think is on readers and society in general.
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There is much news that can be published concerning ISIS and the killing of religious communities like Christian and Muslim groups. For example, the ISIS group have been killing innocent children who do not act as they wish. There are many cases of killing of gay men by pushing them from top of buildings by ISIS group (Campillo, 2014). The soldiers who refuse to join their group and those who try to leave the group are murdered too, but such news is not found anywhere in the front pages of a newspaper or daily news bulleting. There are many issues that media houses can cover that are much important to the nation. Many people are still struggling with poverty; lack of food, clean water, education, and healthcare. Also, there are many international issues that can be covered, tragic accidents, bills that aims to help public and healthcare issues that can be very beneficial to people. I have always been bothered by the priority given to celebrity news when there is much more that can be featured. When you visit celebrity sites, you will be shocked by the number of people who follow their stories on daily basis but when you visit sites concerning national development projects, you will rarely find anybody following.
The changing climate has become the biggest concern of the whole world. The effort to bring attention to this issue of climate change to the international forums has failed due to lack of media coverage. The news stories concerning the environment have reduced from “134 in 1990 and 95 in 1991 to 221 stories in 1998, and 172 in 1999” (Guo, 2015). Presently, there is very little going on media platform concerning environment which is threatening human survival. The media should give environment topics more attention than any other topics so that people can be aware of the consequences of not preserving forests ad emission of poisonous gases. The media are busy covering celebrities’ stories to generate more money and capture attention of young people who follow so much about celebrities’ lifestyle while they have forgotten to discuss affairs of national concern. The present studies have indicated that media reporting on national affairs have reduced by 25% from 2010 while reporting about entertainments and celebrities’ life have doubled (CROTEAU, HOYNES, & MILAN, 2012). Many people are not aware of the effects of GDP in the country and significant contributors of unemployment. The national issues need much coverage by media to keep citizens updated. The media should educate people about primary health care, how to combat the issue of unemployment which is a national concern and educational issues. The research has shown that media has failed in coverage of academic activities. 56% of the citizen in U.S. A believes that media is not capturing academic issues on their platforms (HJ, 2013). Media coverage of educational activities is feeble, and it should be enhanced to gain the better outcomes.
In conclusion, media coverage put more emphasis on celebrity life because that is what their readers want to hear. Media houses compete for any other business, and they have to make their customer happy by providing them with what they want to hear. Otherwise, they will be kicked out of business since there will be very few people who will be reading their news if they concentrate on serious issues in the country. The media hoses should come up with ways to ensure they give their readers news about celebrity and also inform people about serious issues in the world at the same time. If they put their attention on issues of celebrity and leave behind issues of national concern, the solution to many problems in the country will not be found. There are stories out there much more interesting and important for people than the articles about what Hollywood stars are wearing or who they are dating. We don’t need people who have a minimal impact on our lives filling the pages of newspapers and leaving out news about real problems in our society. The society should change their priorities in the newspaper and focus more on news that aim at helping their lives become better.
References
Annik Dubied, T. H. (2014). Studying celebrity news:Celebrity news and the dark planet. Journalism , Vol. 15(2) , 137–143.
Campillo, S. (2014). Do we pay too much attention to celebrities and too little to other things?
CROTEAU, D., HOYNES, W., & MILAN, S. ( 2012). Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, 4th edition. London: Sage Publications.
Guo, J. L. (2015). Expert-Guided Contrastive Opinion Summarization for Controversial Issues. 3rd International Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Social Media, 24th International World Wide Web Confererence. Florence.
HJ, B. (2013). Climate engineering: Spectacle, tragedy or solutions? A content analysis of news media framing. In: Methmann C, Rothe D and Stephan B (eds) Interpretive Approaches to Global Climate Governance: Deconstructing the Greenhouse. New York: Routledge , 166–181.
Wicks PG, N. A. (2007). The role of commodified celebrities in children’s moral development: The case of David Beckham. Consumption, Markets and Culture 10(4). 401–424.
