I like the latest posting from Dan Gillmor at his Centre for Citizen Media site. It chimes with my views about media that indulge the culture of celebrity. Here it is, almost in full (with minor deletions relating to US-specific remarks) with a question or two from me at the end:
"I'm in an airport... where a big-screen TV is showing CNN. It's a split screen. Half is devoted to some meaningless hearing in the Anna Nicole Smith case. The other features a private plane that may or may not be having trouble with landing gear.
"Last night... I was part of a semi-debate at the University of California... Former CNN Asia correspondent Mike Chinoy, a superb journalist, and I actually agreed more than we disagreed on many of the topics in the session, entitled Will the internet kill newspapers and broadcast news? I was arguing in the affirmative, wishing it wasn't likely but unable to solve a business puzzle that demands more innovation than I've seen to date from these businesses.
"CNN might survive as a National Enquirer of cable, though how it will compete with Fox for that dishonour is unclear. But the more the once-proud network sinks lower and lower into tabloidism, with this morning's non-news voyeurism... [with] demagogues who degrade the public debate and demean everyone who cares about true journalism, the harder it will be for anyone to claim that CNN does anything but provide slick (and often sick) entertainment for people who don't want to know what's actually going on in the world.
"Update: Anna Nicole Smith is still deceased. The plane landed safely."
Excellent stuff from Gillmor. But the central question is whether there is any relationship between continual mainstream coverage of the trivial and the gradual erosion of mainstream media? There's loads of celebrity froth on the net which is accessed by many millions of users. There is also plenty of serious material in newspapers and on TV and radio which, it has to be said, attract only minority audiences. So it cannot be the case, can it, that the net's eventual domination will make the least difference to the quality of public debate? Indeed, could it degrade that debate still further?
