COMM 150: U.S. media: View from Mars?

Matt Frei of BBC News in Washington has a cute take on some current obsessions of the American news media. Read Frei's column, answer the questions below and post your answers as comments to this blog. Explain your reasoning in 4-5 well chosen sentences.

First, the questions. How do does the celebrity "news" that Frei complains of square with the social responsiblity theory of the press (and other media)? What does it tell you about American society? What is your own opinion of this stuff? Do you read it? (I do.) Why? Or, if you don't, why not? Should you? Why? Or why not? Here's another question: Are people like Lisa Nowak, Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith entitled to a little compassion? Why? Or why not? How much? Why?

Here's how Frei begins:

When little green men from Mars eventually descend on our planet and unearth America's time capsule dating back to the beginning of the year 2007, it could skewer their whole view of our great civilisation.

"What's with the viewing figures?" they will wonder.

The country was embroiled in a losing war in Iraq, a festering war in Afghanistan and a looming war at the presidential polls.

But the issues that glued the nation to their flickering screens involved an astronaut who wore a nappy while driving across the country, a pop star who was so vexed by celebrity life she shaved off all her hair and a dead stripper whose burial tested the wits of Florida's finest legal minds.

Read the rest of it. It'll remind you about the great issues of the day. . Then comment to the board.