UNGOSSIPING SHOWS

If I were a celebrity of sort and approached one day by a crowd of journalists asking me what someone should do to live a healthier and happier life, I’d say people shouldn’t be reading gossip news nor watching gossip shows. I’d also add gossips and stuff don’t do any good to life.

I have no idea if they will print or air my statement.

Any idea how many gossip shows we have on our TVs? Let’s see. One TV dutifully has four for you in a day, each lasts for 30 minutes; it gives you one at 6 A.M to welcome your new day, another one at 10 AM to make sure you remember what you watched at 6 AM, another at 3 PM to tell you it is something you have watched at 6 AM and 9 AM, and the other one at 9 PM just to see you realize that you are too late to feel disgusted. Please understand that it supplies you the shows everyday, and the other eight TV stations do the same.

I gotta admit that one of the things that annoys me is gossip news or shows on TV. I know it’s a living paradox; as we live in a time when TVs have contributed to the popular creed of “just mind your own business”, they at the same time simply do the opposite.

Nobody is benefited by gossip shows. Simply uselessly informed. If one watches the news that tells him that this celebrity just delivered her first baby from her third marriage, or, one TV informs that actor lost his hair after he’d lost his girl, then how would this information benefit him?

Gossip shows are bound to make their viewers small and leave them daydreaming, making them wish their life were as easy as the celebrities’. If staying in a hotel is what they avoid the best they can, simply because it is an expensive thing to do, the shows would tell you that this actor has lived in that hotel, costing him $5,000 every night; you bought a 100-meter-square property and you told the whole world how proud you were for your hard-earned achievement, and they would tell you that none of those celebrities were even willing to occupy on a property of less than 10,000 meters square.

One of the responsibilities of those TVs is to report news, not to create it. However, you have seen it too many times they would throw a rumor “One man indeed saw this basketball player holding hands with the mysterious woman so passionately”, that set this one guy on fire and he would naturally retaliate by saying “It is not true”, “It’s so groundless and irresponsible”. The press conference for denying would be set up but of course it couldn’t make up the damage done. One news got heard and somebody got hurt. Nobody realizes how unethical this has been.

So, when those TVs have tried so successfully to replace the word gossip with the word infotainment, I find it disturbing. To me, info is information, data, from which one benefits and entertainment is a performed spectacle which a spectator enjoys, but not at the expense of the performer. To my dismay, some suggested the word edutainment for this kind of show: education and entertainment.

Mom’s right; say no evil, hear no evil, and see no evil.