Hollywood Echo Chamber

I allowed myself (and probably shouldn’t have) five minutes to read about this kerfuffle between Megyn Kelly and Jane Fonda.  Of course, Fonda is “a Hollywood icon”—how dare she be called to task about her “activism” against the Viet Nam War.

Does anyone ever look at how much news on the mainstream media (and the more right-wing outlets) is about Hollywood?

How in the world does anything that happens in Hollywood affect me in my daily life?  There is absolutely no connection.  I can’t even use pop culture references in my lectures because all the students watch different shows and movies and listen to different music, none of which I can keep up with.  I doubt they even know who Jane Fonda is. 

But Jane Fonda, as nauseated as she makes me (she’d be nowhere without her father’s legacy) is not the issue.  The issue is that the news media does not report on things that matter—or if it does, one must dig deep.  What matters is public policy, the stock market, the economy, laws that are passed or not. 

My favorite (not) story about this is how one rare night a couple of years ago I watched NBC Nightly News (never since).  They spent two minutes on a UN report on how vile the North Korea government’s treatment of prisoners is.  They spent five minutes on Jimmy Fallon taking over the Tonight Show. 

The media lives to support itself.  The news reports on Hollywood, I suppose to drive us to the movies and TV shows.  Hollywood makes movies about itself and the media (look at how many movies, especially Oscar-bait, are about actors, movie-making, Hollywood cultures, and the news media.)  You can guarantee there will always be at least one (The Post, this year) and usually more. 

I study mediated communication as part of my discipline, although I am not an expert.  I implore every American to approach media with a very, very skeptical eye, and to dig deeper (BBC is usually good) for real news.  Everyone talks about fake news, but we should worry about “real news.”