When I heard a couple of guys in the fitness center mention a certain celebrity this morning, my stomach became acidic over such a base discussion. Even people who think she is non-news feel compelled to mention her, for example, Mallard Fillmore or current writer.
There is a certain herd instinct in people, in and out of the media, to make news where there is none or even provide more weight to certain people or ideas and less weight to other people or ideas, regardless of their true importance.
Political campaigns highlight this problem. The media reports on front-runners in polls and voters vote for front-runners. The polls become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wrote about this in "Reporting News or Making News", Reader Weekly, Nov. 9, 2006.
