By now it’s a well known fact that certain media outlets just seem to want celebrities to fail; for the simple reason that they need something to report on. So the more they mess up the more they can report on it. This seems to be a trend spreading to media outlets which used to be more serious, so a general change of attitude of certain websites.
One of the biggest showbiz news sites is TMZ.com owned by AOL. In the past they used to report factual news about celebrities, about their personal life (so not really about their career). They reported on this without a real opinion added to it, so a rather objective view. Of course they added subjective comments from time to time but nothing major. Recently however they’re just starting to be mean.
On March 19th, Comedy Central aired an episode of South Park, the episode was about the media never leaving Britney Spears alone. Only looking for the bad things in her life and doing nothing but bashing her. In the episode Britney blew the top of her head off and survived, so we saw Britney walking around with only half a head for the rest of the episode still being haunted by the media. In the end she’s being shot to death by cameras and flashes (she was a sacrifice for the corn harvest but that’s just the South Park twist to it all).
Overlooking the fact the extremely hypocritical nature of the episode (usually Matt Stone and Trey Parker are first in line to make fun of and trash celebrities messing up) they do have a poitn. Everyone is just looking for more and more dirt on Britney, not caring about any possible positive sign. The end of the episode pretty much presented Miley Cyrus as the next media acrifice. This brings us back to TMZ.com, it was already known that Perez Hilton hates Miley’s guts and that X17 has no hope for her at all but now TMZ.com has joined them.
At first they reported in an objective way on her but not anymore, now they’re doing their best to trash Miley. She flashes a peace sign too often it makes her the next Lindsay Lohan (though X17 seems to focus on that more than TMZ does), like she patented the peace sign; there are plenty of other people that use it. Their weirdest story of the last couple of weeks is one about Hannah Montana merchandising though. In some Hannah Montana bags and backpacks an independent institute found lead contents that were too high.
Sure this is a bad thing but hardly unique, there are recalls of Chinese products because of high lead contents all the time. When confirmed this would prove a big gap in Disney merchandising quality control but that’s something Disney has to deal with. So what does TMZ do? They ask Miley Cyrus’ representative for a statement. They of course didn’t get one but why would they? The products might have her face on it but she’s hardly responsible for the quality control. All she pretty much does is approve whether she likes it or not and gets the royalties for the product.
The ones responsible for design, production and quality control is with companies like Disney. The press release from the organisation that did the tests didn’t even mention Miley. I have to wonder why a showbiz site has to report on something like this, this is something for a consumer news. All TMZ achieves with this is pointing a finger at Miley, we have to remember that they also saw Miley looking after a stray dog as a bad thing (if that was an attempt at sarcasm they failed)
Another thing about the people making TMZ, they’re cowards. TMZ posted a story of Miley look for a lost dog, TMZ claimed that this was all a set-up to get Miley extra publicity. First of all Miley needing more publicity? I doubt that’s even possible, her mother Tish wasn’t too happy about it and said something to the paparazzi about it. The paparazzi working for TMZ asked her if she wanted to say something to TMZ while adding that he doesn’t work for TMZ. Just stand for the company you work for and don’t be too ashamed to admit that you’re working for them.
Something surprises me about the comments to articles like that, people aren’t accepting it. Of course there are people saying how ugly or untalented she is (hardly relevant to the article) but the majority of people are complaining about TMZ reporting things like this. The feeling from the majority of the public towards articles like this seems to be that they want them to leave Miley alone. Report on her when there actually is news on her, they can call her the next Britney or Lindsay if she actually messes up.
It seems that the whole thing with Britney Spears really has made people think that they had enough of the constant negativity of the gossip media. Makes me hope that sites like TMZ and the paparazzi actually will give up on Miley at some point, when do they realise that there is nothing there? The most shocking thing they caught her on so far is wearing the same outfit two days in a row, what a scandal. They can follow her around all they want but that doesn’t make her mess up. Maybe she really is the good girl she aspires to be, just give the girl, and any other celebrity without a bad record yet for that matter, a chance.
Miley is being followed by about thirty shutterbugs these days while there are only six on Britney’s case, so they really seem to get bored with Britney and need a new target. Though Miley’s relationship with the paparazzi is a bit strange, her mother buys them cookies and they give her jewellery as a present. She’s always been nice to them so far, I just wonder how long that will last. Especially if they start hindering her possibilities to move around, she’ll have her license soon so she probably won’t have her mother with her all the time any more.
I’m usually not in the business of trashing other websites but it seems that I’m far with the only one who has issues with the way sites like TMZ are reporting “news†these days. It’s a clear evolution from a normal gossip news site to a trash site. Though another trash site just went out of business, the New York Post pulled the plug on pagesix.com.
It’s just wishful thinking but maybe more sites will follow that example. People still want to see celebrities suffer and some of them are even supported by celebrities. If I look at all the people who showed up to Perez Hilton’s birthday it’s just sad really. He trashes them one week and he parties with them the next.
Tags: Miley Cyrus
