Does watching E! News make me a bad citizen?

Pretty much since, well, forever, I have been fascinated with E! News and the celebrity gossip and updates the television show provides audiences. It wasn't until taking this mass communication class that I questioned whether E! News was even "news" at all.

If you visit the E! News website on any given day, you'll see tons of celebrity updates including what the celebrities are up to - who is pregnant, who is engaged or breaking up, fashion highlights, and other gossip.

This goes along with my earlier post about consumerist culture. We consider a video like the following to be "news." This is a video posted by E! News' Youtube channel of the launch of Khloe and Lamar's new fragrance, Unbreakable.



Its crazy that now, everywhere I look, I see consumerist culture being endorsed by celebrities. The group who presented yesterday stated that the commercialization of mainstream media has contributed to the "dumbing down" of the public sphere.

I have now been able to see that E! News is more infotainment than news, and taking that a step further, has contributed to the lack of involvement by the public sphere in current events and politics.

I mean, I rarely read an actual newspaper - and if I do, it is rarely and online. I consider getting my dose of daily news to be checking my friends' and celebrities' Twitter feeds and watching shows like E! News. When I engage with the media I consume, it is about something that interests me, not politics or world affairs.

This realization makes me feel like I've been a bad citizen. A democracy is all about coming together to express ideas and opinions about the important issues, and I have failed to take part in that.

But if I wasn't consuming entertainment news, it isn't like I'd be spending my free time reading up on foreign policy. The internet and collaborative media has actually, in all honesty, increased my awareness when it comes to politics. I follow President Obama on Twitter and I Google stories that my friends are talking about so I don't sound like an idiot in conversation.

I'm not sure if I would consider myself "actively engaging" or "opting out" of the public sphere. Its more like the public sphere comes to me, and there is no way I can get away from it. I feel bombarded by information wherever I go, and collaborative media is the root of it all. And maybe I'm not a bad citizen, but a typical citizen.