Current Issues in Journalism

I agree that your findings on facebook are interesting. It's just like when Steve Irwin died, the world was shocked and of course there were facebook groups made. I would say they were more shocked by his death than Anna Nicole's mainly because he was an environmentalist and usually people that do good things throughout their lives are greatly missed and receive, hmmm how should I put this? "Quality coverage?" by journalists. Anna Nicole has had coverage, even making her out to be some sort of saint, but people are still hooked even if they knew she wasn't. I guess what I'm trying to say is that no matter who it is in the Hollywood realm, whether someone like Anna Nicole or Steve Irwin, two totally opposite personalities, people are always going to watch it. Who really knows why? To distract themselves, as some are saying, from what is really going on in the world, or to just sympathize with the family that's been left behind, which is something most of us can relate to and it just makes those celebrities all the more real to us.

Like Jesse, I find your little experiment interesting as well. Here are my thoughts.
Our culture focuses more on topics "American" than foreign. Anna Nicole is a safe topic to discuss, because sadly she is dead. Sudan is a highly sensitive and political topic that we feel sadness, anger, and helplessness when we hear about it. It is much safer for Americans to learn of some new development about Anna Nicole, than the Sudanese people. Our media spends more time on Anna Nicole, partly because of ignorant journalists who regurgitate current news because it requires no knowledge of history, and no knowledge of political views. It is much safer to report on a celebrity with know drug problems and known "issues," but really what can we do about it? There is nothing we can do, so it's easy.
There is plenty we could do for the Sudanese. But what? We feel powerless. Americans like to feel that our opinions are powerful.
Log on to a Anna Nicole blog but blast her. Log on to a Sudan blog, feel powerless, because we are more or less powerless and uninformed.

I thought what you found on facebook was pretty interesting and true as well. Whether we like to admit it or not, news such as Anna Nicole’s death does concern a lot of us. It concerns some people because they are so caught up in celebrity drama that they feel that her death is important to them. It is affecting other people because they are just plain sick of hearing about it. I mean let’s think about it, hours after news came out about Anna Nicole’s death at only age 39, many people were not sure exactly how to describe what or who Anna Nicole Smith was. Actress? Model? Reality star? Rich widow? I don’t think a lot of people actually knew who she was, but she was supposedly “famous”. All of us try to put a finger on why we watched this woman over the years, and basically it comes down to two things, dysfunction and beauty. We know people like to watch about dysfunction in this world, and beauty gives you something extra to look at.
We all know she did nothing put sit in front of a camera to model, and take diet pills to “try” and influence others to want to look like her. What kind of person is she to say that she was a role model for younger girls? Like you said in your post, she did have more facebook groups than Sudan groups, and the reason for this is because people like to hear about drama and things that are affecting the world, not necessarily affecting us as individuals, but affecting someone, somewhere. Just like when we were all in High School, people liked to get involved in drama. There was drama everywhere, whether you were involved or not, people wanted to know other peoples business. Anna Nicole was what we lust for and loathe for in our society; a bombshell blonde, family feuds, lots and lots of money, weight troubles, she had it all.

Although I can say that I don't pay attention to a lot of world news, I can also say that I don't pay attention to anything dealing with celebrities because none of it seems like real news. I've tried watching an Entertainment Tonight show while watching dinner and it made me want to throw all of that food up (No, not like the actresses they were talking about). I found the experiment of Facebook groups quite interesting to say the least. what I have to say about the Facebook groups is that a lot of the anna Nicole Smith ones are probably teens that are interested in that drama and that is reflecting what the youth culture likes to view as far as news coverage. I really don't like how that is what the youth wants to see but thats just the way it is.