As major news corporations line up to reveal the latest celebrity affair, immensely important news is being overlooked. Despite other imperative news occurrences, many news corporations choose to feature less significant, yet more popular news stories. News like natural disasters, successful charity events and uplifting stories are traded for reports on the latest celebrity affairs or other useless things such as “the dress that broke the Internet.”

Thanks to the sensationalizing of popular media, unimportant stories and celebrities whose claim to fame is unknown or meaningless, people may fail to care about the relevant news. For most, this style of gossip news is more relevant and entertaining. In other words, people love to talk poorly about others or be excited or worried, and the news has taken advantage of that. Even when meaningful events occur, and the news as a whole chooses to cover that subject, it’s often overshadowed by a lesser news story. The news network itself is blameless; they’re simply trying to keep up with the times. If a news network chooses to feature solely relevant news, its viewer numbers would surely drop. The media, in a sense, is filtered based on what the people want to see, and, therefore, has to adapt and cover both meaningless and relevant news.

“There are several factors at work in the media,” Bill Vidonic, writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune said. “The media field has become more crowded, clamoring for our attention constantly, so some [other news networks] focus on “fluff” to rise above the noise and grab our attention.”

It’s understandable that news corporations find it pointless to report on news no one cares about, but this presents a problem. As people stop caring, and that news coverage fades away, it’s forgotten. This means that the news story is heard less than ever, and, in turn, the people care even less. This kind of hard hitting news is often placed on the back shelf because it does not impact the reader directly. The shrinking of media staff additionally contributes to the lack of real journalism.

“Media cannot take the time or resources to focus on hard-hitting, investigative journalism as was the norm at one point,” Vidonic said.

For the most part, people tend to care most about news that has a direct impact on their lives. Unfortunately, however, many news corporations believe that in order to be relevant, the story has to be tragic, negative or scandalous.

“It is a bad reflection on our society, the amount of negative news that is shown,” Principal Mr. William Deal said.

In today’s world, social media has become a readily available and easily accessible news source. Unfortunately, these news outlets are even more susceptible to the wants of the people, and often neglect important details due to character restrictions. The reliability of the source can also be called into question, as any individual on Twitter can post what they call news. News on a local news channel is usually researched by a team of media specialists, although that is not to say news is not biased just like social media.

Because the opinions of many influence the media most see, it’s their duty to shape the media coverage. If a person doesn’t like a particular news story, it’s best to pay no attention to it. This sends the news company a message, telling them that people don’t want to see this. The news company is simply catering to the people, and if the people demand more hard hitting news, they will surely see a change in their stories.