With everything that happened this past weekend, I think it is the perfect time to discuss how the media has the ability to help and also hurt people in the media, especially celebrities. On Sunday, January 26th, we lost one of the most influential athletes of all time, Kobe Bryant. Whether you were a sports fan or not, the coming of this news was something that shook the world. This accident was so unexpected and extremely tragic and the media seemed to make the pain of it all even worse.
The news outlet, well, more like celebrity gossip outlet, TMZ, is currently under harsh scrutiny for being the first outlet to release the news of Kobe’s death before his family even knew what happened. Unfortunately, they have since deleted the article so I am unable to link it, but there are now petitions to call for the cancellation of TMZ completely after what they had done. This news article came out saying that only three people had died in the helicopter which is not only wrong, but very disrespectful to the families of the other six people who were on board.
An analysis piece was done by CNN discussing the wrong doing of TMZ and went into greater detail as to why this act was beyond uncalled for. This article provided actual quotes from those who were affected by this news leak and also quotes from the founder of TMZ which made it very credible.
One quote that stood out to me from the founder is “It’s so funny to me that people ask that question… We’re a news operation. I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do as a news operation is chase down stories. And it always kind of amuses me when people ask that question. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing? I mean, that is the job.” To me, this is a prime example of how heartless celebrity news outlets really are. They just want to be the first to get the story out and do not think about the implications of it.
Another analysis piece done by The Hill went into great detail about why TMZ was so wrong for doing this to the families affected. For credibility, a quote was provided from the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva. Villanueva was very saddened when he heard that TMZ released the news while he was still trying to collect all of the evidence and prepare for how he was going to tell the families.
Most other news outlets, like the New York Times, waited until they had all of the details before writing the article about his death. This in itself makes it reliable and credible. It was a very well written article and gave credit to the other families that were affected by this tragic accident. In the media, it is easy for them to only focus on the Bryant family because of their popularity, but I thought that going into detail about the others who were on board was very kind and respectful. It is what Kobe would have wanted.
Overall, this whole week has been very eye opening in terms of how celebrity news is treated in the media. I almost could not believe my eyes at the stories that we coming out every hour after Kobe’s passing. Each one was being updated as new information was coming out and no one really knew what the truth was until the next day. In times of tragedy like this, I think that celebrity news outlets need to take the backseat and let the outlets who know the hard facts provide the news to everyone. This whole situation was very heartbreaking and just proves how many issues there really are in the media.
