Michael Jackson was arrested Thursday after he was accused ofmultiple counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child.
Not surprisingly, the news spread quickly.
The same thing happened when Kobe Bryant was accused of sexualassault, or when O.J. Simpson was accused of murder. Of course, wecan't forget Robert Blake, Winona Ryder or Courtney Love.
The swirl of media attention these cases get is representativeof a disturbing trend: Our country salivates over the kind of"breaking news" that, when celebrity is subtracted, is merelycommonplace.
If Mr. Average walks into Saks Fifth Avenue and steals a fewshirts, CNN would not broadcast important aspects of his trial. Butthe network did when Ryder was the criminal, even though ourcountry was at war.
And if we can't get our fill from celebrities' mishaps, then wedelight in the tremendous misfortunes of ordinary citizens. Twomade-for-television movies were produced to capitalize on the dramaof real life, in "The Elizabeth Smart Story," airing on CBS, andNBC's "Saving Jessica Lynch." The movies attracted 15.7 million and14.9 million viewers, respectively. You begin to wonder when ABC isgoing to option the rights to "Michael Jackson: Unmasked."
But on the same day Jackson was arrested, to whom CNN devotedhours and hours of news coverage, an effigy of President Bush wasbeing burned in London. According to the Toronto Star online, thatThursday, 27 people were killed and 400 were injured by truck bombsin Turkey. Military operations in Iraq continued. And a jointreport by Canada and the U.S. detailing the causes of August'sblackout was released.
These important news items were pushed to the ends of broadcastsor to the second pages of newspapers, because a famous person wascharged with a crime.
It's time to stop equating "celebrity" to "newsworthiness."
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