Monday, January 20, 2014

Justin Bieber is a Vandal (Maybe). News at 11.

Justin Bieber was almost busted after allegedly throwing eggs at his neighbor's house in California.

Most of the local Los Angeles stations covered the story on their newscasts. One outlet even aired the police press conference about the event live as it was going on. It even made news in the United Kingdom (above).

Is this a news story? Should journalists cover such relatively minor events as a pop singer's alleged vandalism?

Or, is this such goofy, fun stuff that you have to run it on the news?

4 comments:

Lauren W. said...

Great first class today! Didn't mind walking through the snow to come to this class.

I think this is technically ~news~ because it involves a highly talked about public figure. Not all of us like him, including myself, but it is worth talking about. A lot of people would see this as a minor story, but perhaps it was the most major story of that time. There wasn't much going on last week besides the whole "bridgegate" thing, and you can't talk about JUST that. Bieber's story isn't really relevant to any of our lives, but it's news and it's entertaining.

On the subject of Bieber's friend being blamed for the stash of cocaine, I believe that the arrest made was completely unfair. It was in Bieber's home, so Bieber should have been the one arrested. The other kid could have absolutely nothing to do with this. Is this a race issue, or is it more "Justin Bieber is famous, we'll listen to him." I think it's definitely more of the former, but that's an argument for another day.

Coral Matos - J1111-001: Journalism & Society said...

I absolutely believe this is a news story. Although I may not follow Justin Bieber as a fan, I must admit he has become a very well known celebrity in a very short time. As a result, news like "Justin Bieber's egg throwing" keeps society awake because it allows us to explore each others opinions about many topics. In this case, topics that deal with our government, police, celebrities and their extended freedom may arise because of this simple news. Although, one might think that Justin's act of "vandalism" is too goofy to run it on the news, I think is necessary in order to create some kind of balance between "serious news" and "entertaining news". It's all news nonetheless!

Danika Palmeri said...

As much as I want to say that Justin Bieber's arrest is not news as it is not important to the daily lives of people living in America, that is just my opinion that other people may or may not share. If we are to be subjective, we need to accept that news comes in all different forms. I think that there are different types of news, and that that this type of news story should have been restricted to certain news channels such as E! or Entertainment Weekly. This story is a form of entertainment news. I found an internet "meme" that I thought would add to this post, but we are unable to add pictures in these comments. It consisted of 2 pictures: the top of explosions in the Ukraine and the bottom of Bieber in handcuffs, stating: "The violence in the Ukraine has surged into apocalyptic scenes, and all mainstream media shows you is this douche getting arrested." This reminded me about the things we talked about in class on the first day. There are so many other things going on in the world that most would deem more important than a teenage superstar's arrest, but we need to realize that the intake of different news stories is subjective. For example, the bombings in The Ukraine may be irrelevant to a 13 year old girl, but Bieber's arrest may have completely destroy her world as she knows it. However, all of us young and old use news outlets to understand the world around us. Therefore I believe that different types of news stories should be communicated through different channels and forms of mass media. Maybe the Bieber story should not have merited the headline "Breaking News" and interrupted the day's news programs but instead stayed in the pages of In Touch Weekly.

Woo Jeong Kim said...

I personally think the main reason why Justin Bieber is on the news is because he is that famous for us to know what he's always up to (unfortunately). If the same thing happened to any other normal kid in America it would not have been blown up to be this big of an issue. I guess journalists should report news like this because it is related to a popular figure.

People should know what kind of person Justin Bieber is and that we do not need trouble makers like him.