Who are you again?
From the TV news headline page at zap2it.com yesterday:
The death of any 24-year-old is a horrible event. But let’s leave that aside for just a moment…
Some thoughts on this story.
- Who the hell is Heidi Montag? (I had to look it up.) The story never explains who she is. Are we all supposed to know? Apparently if we did know who she was (she’s on MTV’s phony reality show The Hills) we wouldn’t care about her anyway.
- Stepbrother? Really?
- This is not a news story about a young man dying. It’s a news story about a fake-reality-show telepersonality giving an interview to US Weekly about something that happened last week.
- “He couldn’t wait to meet Spencer,” Montag tells usmagazine.com. “He was always like, ‘I love you! I have to meet Spencer and make sure he’s cool to you!’” Uh, Spencer who? Crap, zap2it, you’re going to make me go to Google again, aren’t you?
I don’t know what makes me weep for our society more. Is it that a story like this is considered news? Is it that the star of a faux-reality show on MTV will use her stepbrother’s death as a publicity opportunity? Or is it that a nonsensical story like this ever saw the light of day?
Moral of this story: If you’re going to write news stories about other publications’ interviews about events that happened a week ago, please explain why the unimportant non-celebrity you’re writing about is supposedly famous.
This is the thing, these publications also have an obvious bias towards people who watch television anyway. I had heard of the Hills before but we just got it on UK terrestial tv on Channel 4 a month ago and I was shocked to see a disclaimer that said that "some scenes were created for entertainment purposes". Lauren, Heidi and co are all actresses. Of course, her stepbrother dying is awful but like you noted, why does she then get all the attention?