I can feel it as I type this: my opinion on this wouldn’t be popular with the general public.
All I really have going for me is the fact I’m not debating a heavily-contested issue, such as politics, the NFL Draft (that guy who is good with a football should have totally gone to another team last night) or the whether the dog filter on Snapchat is cute.
No, my opinion lies within the “national nightmare” that was Michael Strahan up and leaving his show with Kelly Ripa for Good Morning America, without even so much of a mention.
Rude? Maybe. From a rational person’s standards, I’d say its pretty likely, but I don’t know what kind of co-worker Ripa is.
My issue comes in when celebrities are given the job of a journalists, because they’re personable and have name-recognition. I believe there’s a part of the media industry where that kind of mentality belongs – it’s called advertising.
When it comes to the news, it should be reserved for people who worked as writers, reporters and producers for these shows for years, who deserve a promotion for their hard work. I think we need to be asking ourselves where the objectivity and reputation of being truthful has been during these celebrities’ whole professional career before we accept them onto our TV sets each day.
To drag advertising back into this, Strahan has done advertising, with Vaseline, GotMilk? and Subway.
You know for a fact that David Muir, Lester Holt and Scott Pelley would have never gotten where they are now, had they sold their image and likeness. It would have been considered a compromise and a betrayal of their objectivity.
It’s again that same song of ratings-driving-content that has come to bother me in the past year. I think it’s fine right now for celebrities to host entertainment shows, but the news needs to be off-limits.
I wouldn’t want to have Kim Kardashian moderating a political debate or Robert Downey, Jr. covering a catastrophe the size of 9/11 or the Boston bombing, and neither should the American public.
We all deserve better news, and better journalists. Celebrities are not the answer.