What if a celebrity exposed her breast and everyone yawned?
By now, we've all probably been overexposed to discussions about the breast seen 'round the world. Most of the debate, however, has been about the morality of two entertainers, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, colluding in that infamous "wardrobe malfunction."
The rest of the discussion has been about the morality of MTV, the NFL,and CBS allowing it to happen during what is commonly recognized as a family entertainment event, broadcast over public airwaves.
So, we have the FCC and Congress looking into this incident specifically and vulgarity over the airwaves generally. (An overreaction, by the way).
Missing, however, has been much discussion on the news media's role in l'affaire mammary. Specifically, the ethics of reporting on it ad naseum. As in overkill.
Google the words "Janet Jackson" and "breast" and you come up with about 149,000 hits, many of them from the websites of reputable news organizations. A Nexus search of U.S. newspapers, Feb. 2-12, gets 1,813 hits. And even a casual surfing of the television news shows the week after the exposition revealed no embarrassment whatsoever in showing the allegedly obscene event over and over. It was somehow supposed to be more palatable because that fuzzy patch was imposed on Jackson's breast. (Question: Aren't those news broadcasts also using the public airwaves?)
So, we have news broadcasts reporting on the back-and-forth debate on the morality of the halftime incident, while also replaying the same incident just to remind us precisely what occurred.
Understand, this was news. The Super Bowl is news. Even the commercials can be news, as in what they trotted out this year and whether they were better than last year's. And the halftime show can also be news, usually, however, as a footnote to what is supposed to be the big event.
In case anyone forgot, that would be the game. Quick, who won?
Don't feel bad if the coverage on Jackson's lack of breast coverage made you have to think a bit about the answer.
Yes, it was news. But it wasn't big news.
My initial reaction -– yawning over a celebrity breast sighting -– is really more a reflection of how I wish things were (as opposed to how things are). I know that prurience and Puritanism compete with equal ferocity in our culture. Still, I also know that the news media can be part of the problem when those notions are stretched to extremes. It was certainly part of the problem here.
What we give -- that others don't -- to a story is balance and perspective. Both seemed to be conspicuously absent from this coverage.
While this story ran, Howard Dean's campaign was busy imploding for a variety of reasons. One of them, however, was that he too was a victim of that same media overkill. How many times did we have to see that clip of him trying to rally his troops at the Iowa Caucus?
To television folks: You really can describe events rather than show them. Yes, I know your medium depends on visuals to a greater extent than the rest of ours. But folks also depend on you for that balance and perspective, absent when you show the same alleged offense over and over. It's called stacking the deck.
To newspaper folks: Overkill is possible here as well with both visuals and descriptions but mostly with story play and frequency way out of proportion to the importance or, I suspect, the real interest in the event.
There was a good way to cover this -– how to explain it to the kids or a discussion of sex's larger role in entertainment, for instance. But that was only tangential to most of the coverage I saw.
Partly the way this played out reflects our continuing generational chasm.
As they saw the sense-numbing overload unfold, they were probably becoming more convinced by the day that we still really are their daddies' newspapers and broadcasts. My 19-year-old daughter is about as upstanding as they come, but even a passing conversation with her on l'affaire mammary reveals both confusion and boredom. Confused over why there was an uproar and boredom about a celebrity breast that was –- yawn -– briefly exposed.
And there are indications that my daughter is not the exception. A survey by Blue Fusion, a new youth marketing group, of 310 youth, ages 12 to 20, revealed much the same reaction. Seventy-four percent said CBS was overreacting and 61 percent said the rest of the media was doing the same. Moreover, 61 percent said the media would have reacted the same way even if some other artist, whose name isn't Jackson, had exposed herself.
OK, you may be suspicious of the methodology here. Just ask around, and I suspect you'll discover the same evidence anecdotally.
But, of course, 12- to 20-year-olds aren't running news organizations. The fact is a lot of newsrooms are kind of light on even 20- and 30-somethings.
The news overkill of this incident makes it glaringly apparent how we continue to be disengaged from the young folks we all say we want as readers and viewers. As they saw the sense-numbing overload unfold, they were probably becoming more convinced by the day that we still really are their daddies' newspapers and broadcasts.
If young folks aren't outraged about the halftime show, it isn't because they're less moral than the rest of us older fuddy-duddies, who do get outraged over such things and make up the larger part of our readership and viewership. So, why not just go with the flow? Well, the press prides itself on not acting as willing accomplices to those with vested interests.
So, consider this AdAge.com quote from James LaForce, a partner in the PR firm of LaForce & Stevens in New York City. He termed Jackson's breast exposure as "extremely successful."
"We love stunts at our agency and she opened the door for more people to take risks," he said. He added, "It raises the bar for all of us."
The media is, with its complicity, encouraging the PR folks and the celebrities they represent to raise that bar, guaranteeing even more outrageous antics well into the future. Which, we, of course, will dociley cover.
The French word for "mammary" is mammaire, and "l'affaire mammaire"...
