Gossip

I apologize in advance. This post will have nothing to do with TV, but it's my blog, and "I do what I want," which I'm pretty sure is a South Park reference. So now it has to do with TV, at least in a peripheral way. So there.

I'd like to talk for a moment about Amanda Knox and her return to the city I too call home, Seattle. Whether or not you believe the girl to be innocent, we can all agree on one thing: The girl has been through an ordeal. She returned home today after spending four years in an Italian prison for a crime she has been acquitted of. After rushing out of Italy fleeing further persecution, she returned home and quite surprisingly spoke before the press.

At this press conference she expressed her gratitude for the support of nations, exhaustion from her experience, and relief that it is more or less over. Personally, I was impressed that she spoke at all, but as a part of the press conference, she and her family expressed a desire to rest and share some private time as a reunited whole.

In the 50 minute drive home, I was listening to the news, and for a solid thirty minutes I listened to a reporter on site in West Seattle at the house of Amanda's father, where the family was gathering to celebrate her return. The reporter asked any and every person present not a member of the press that she could get to a few questions. Without fail, everyone had the same response: We, and Amanda, are grateful, exhausted and relieved. The reporter would then ask one final question: Where is Amanda now? And without fail, the person being interviewed would chuckle and refuse to say. I am sure that if they had figured out where Amanda was hiding out, and asked her the same questions, her answers all would have been the same... again. Thirty minutes I listened to this nonsense, getting steadily angrier, before remembering that the radio in my car had a tuner dial, and I changed the station.

I was not mad at the family, or mad about their responses, I was mad at the so called reporters, who have deemed the harassment of a beleaguered family to be journalism.Whether or not Amanda is innocent, the family is, and they don't deserve the media frenzy that has been thrust upon them. The reporters have not, and will not, learn anything new, anything newsworthy, by talking to the family. If this story truly belongs in the news, the source will be the Italian courts, the effect of the case upon diplomatic relations, the future of the Italian prosecutor and how they will be driven or influenced by this case. There are many ways to make this news, but none of them are being investigated. They are being left behind in favor of the easier, more sensational gossip.

It might seem odd that someone who calls himself a critic and obsessively reads the publications of entertainment journalists would cry foul at gossip. After all, the reputation of Hollywood reporters are red carpet fashionistas and celebrity sexcapades. But there is a difference between gossip mongers and entertainment journalists. A journalist seeks and searches, trying to be the first to share a piece of information. An entertainment journalist will tell you when a new show is premiering, or if a certain show runner has started a new project. They give you news within the entertainment framework. A gossip pesters and prods, also trying to be the first upon a piece of information, but  to know it, for the sake of self satisfaction, not to share it, or enrich the world.

Granted, this is a fairly idealistic concept of the journalism profession, but I'm a fairly optimist person.

And I am sick to death of gossip.