Tiger and the media on the media

One of the things that's interesting about the celebrity culture we're in now and the media environment that's created that culture (or fed it, whatever) is when those media organizations responsible for the around-the-clock coverage Migs refers to recognize just how responsible they are for the whole world they've created. I've been letting my TV run Sports Center at night while I play poker, so last night, I saw (two or three times) a piece on Tiger Woods in anticipation of Woods's prepared-statement-reading schedule for today. A significant portion of the piece was about the media's coverage of the car-crash incident, the later revelations that Woods basically had a harem, Woods's refusal to say anything, his entry into rehab, etc. etc. etc. And a significant portion of that significant portion was about ESPN's coverage of same. The audience was shown the absurd parade of New York Post covers, of course, but also clips and audio from Sports Center, including anchors saying things like "nobody really knows what's going on".


Come on, it's my shtick now.

What is interesting about all this is the way that media outlets seem mature and intelligent enough to realize what they're doing when they report breathlessly on Tiger Woods and yet they do it anyway. It's sort of the analogue to the person who buys Us Weekly at the grocery store and hides it from her friends. We know it's an unhealthy obsession, we know that it does far more harm than good, but we don't know how to quit.

Part of the issue gets back to my initial parenthetical above, about whether the media has created the culture or merely fed it. I'm not sure there is an answer, except for the bromide that we all bear some responsibility: if ESPN and TMZ didn't create the stories, we'd have nothing to click; and if we didn't click the stories, they wouldn't make any money from the creation. The media organizations can always fall back on the old collective-action problem, though: ESPN can't stop reporting on this stuff because no one else will stop, and so they'll lose viewers, lose money, and so forth. Consumers do have a version of this excuse, actually: if all your friends care, then you have to care or else you won't have anything to talk to them about.

Given the lack of solution, I guess we just have to hope for one of two things. First, the continued rise of meta, the media covering the media, which is covered by the media, ad infinitum. If we continue on this endless loop of coverage of coverage, the whole thing will have to just implode on itself at some point, and give us the opportunity to start over. (And thus my motivations for participating in this blog are revealed.) Second, we can hope that people just get bored. "Another steroid story. Blah. Another sex scandal. Blah." Sex and drugs are titillating material, though, so I don't really see this happening anytime soon. Sadly.