Torturous celebrity coverage.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: WORDS IMAGES

IF YOU WANT ANOTHER mason why everyone hates the news media, you do not have to go much further than the coverage of entertainer Michael Jackson's death or of golfer Tiger Woods' adultery. No one would deny that each story is a news event. The problem is the way the news event was covered:

* News organizations, especially the electronic media, did not just cover the story; they would not let go of it. Day after day, the news media in all formats kept repeating the same story. (The old joke among TV newsmen looking for a new lead on an old story in which nothing new was happening: "Michael Jackson is still dead today.") Long after the story had any news value, newspaper and TV coverage continued to squeeze out other stories of importance.

* Many of the news media groups, struggling to get new information as quickly as possible, simply went with gossip, innuendo, rumor, and interviews with people who barely knew either celebrity. The two vital touchstones of responsible journalism--accuracy and fairness--went out the window. What stayed was an old-fashioned rumor mill, in which an outrageous statement would be made and reported, and then the refutation likewise was made and reported. It was the equivalent of asking one celebrity ("A") why he or she was sleeping with another celebrity ("B") just to get a headline on a slow news day: "A" Celebrity denies sleeping with "B" Celebrity.

* When no one will talk to you, interview anyone who had some relationship, no matter how tenuous, to the story--Woods' neighbor or one of the golfers on the circuit who occasionally talked to Woods before teeing off; or interview a journalist who once interviewed someone who knew Jackson intimately; or, better yet, take a group of journalists who cover celebrities and let them speculate on Woods' infidelity or whether his wife chased him out of the house. Let them guess how Jackson died, or let them offer revisionist accolades on what a great entertainer he was. Do not mention anything about Jackson's alleged child molestations. No one wants to hear you speak ill of the dead. Get them while they still are alive (goodbye Tiger Woods, the hero; hello Tiger Woods, the villain).

Broadcast television takes the brunt of this sort of criticism, but now that all the major news media organizations have websites that must be fed stories constantly, every news outlet has become guilty of pursuing any bit of information, whether it is true or not. The theory seems to be that...