Prior to the media merger wave of the mid-1980s and demands by network TV s new owners that news divisions turn a profit, celebrity coverage was not a large portion of the mainstream news diet. That s almost twice the coverage given to Presley, Lennon and Kelly combined. People reacted to her death as though they knew her because the saturation coverage gave people the illusion that they did know her. And I didn t feel about that the way I feel now. As Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen note in Wizards of Media Oz , Reverence for celebrities is the flip side of tacit contempt for average people.
Questions remain to be answered about the paparazzi s impact on that Paris car accident.
But it s more important to question the impact on our society of the mainstream media s relentless promotion of the rich and famous.