Infotainment

In a critique of infotainment, Bonnie Anderson of News Flash cited a CNN lead story on February 2, 2004 following the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast on national television. The follow-up story was about a ricin chemical attack on then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.[6]

Most infotainment television programs on networks and broadcast cable only contain general information on the subjects they cover and should not be considered to be formal learning or instruction. An example of a broadcast may include accusations of a celebrity or other individual committing a crime with no verifiable factual support or evidence of such claims. It can be said that many viewers and social critics disapprove of how media, particularly TV and cable, seem to hurtle from one event to another, often dwelling on trivial, celebrity-driven content [7]

In October 2010 at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, American political satirist Jon Stewart made a metaphorical statement regarding the media today: "The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems . . . illuminating issues heretofore unseen, or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected, dangerous flaming ant epidemic." This statement referred to the news media's ability to focus in on the real problems of people, and transform them into what is known as infotainment, when this information is solely provided for the public's entertainment. Today's broadcasting of informative news is often diluted with stories of scandal, although this is no concern for media and news broadcasters because if you can keep enough viewers week after week focused on whatever is that next "flaming ant epidemic" (e.g. a congressman's sexual indiscretions, conspiracy theories about the president's birth certificate and other examples related to politainment), you can boost audience ratings and sell ads at higher rates.[8]

Some define "journalism" only as reporting on "serious" subjects, where common journalistic standards are upheld by the reporter. Others believe that the larger "news business" encompasses everything from professional journalism to so-called "soft news" and "infotainment", and support activities such as marketing, advertising sales, finance and delivery. Nevertheless, a differentiation of the two concepts of "hard news" and "soft news" is controversial.[11] Professional journalism is supposed to place more emphasis on research, fact-checking, and the public interest than its "non-journalistic" counterparts. Because the term "news" is quite broad, the terms "hard" and "soft" denote both a difference in respective standards for news value, as well as for standards of conduct, relative to the professional ideals of journalistic integrity.

The idea of hard news embodies two orthogonal concepts:

• Seriousness: Politics, economics, crime, war, and disasters are considered serious topics, as are certain aspects of law, business, science, and technology.
• Timeliness: Stories that cover current events—the progress of a war, the results of a vote, the breaking out of a fire, a significant statement, the freeing of a prisoner, an economic report of note.

The logical opposite, soft news is sometimes referred to in a derogatory fashion as infotainment. Defining features catching the most criticism include:

• The least serious subjects: Arts and entertainment, sports, lifestyles, "human interest", and celebrities.
• Not timely: There is no precipitating event triggering the story, other than a reporter's curiosity.

Timely events happen in less serious subjects—sporting matches, celebrity misadventures, movie releases, art exhibits, and so on.

There may also be serious reports which are not event-driven—coverage of important social, economic, legal, or technological trends— investigative reports which uncover ongoing corruption, pollution, or immorality— or discussion of unsettled political issues without any special reason. Anniversaries, holidays, the end of a year or season, or the end of the first 100 days of an administration, can make some stories time-sensitive, but provide more of an opportunity for reflection and analysis than any actual "news" to report.

The spectrum of "seriousness" and "importance" is not well-defined, and different media organizations make different tradeoffs. "News you can use", a common marketing phrase highlighting a specific genre of journalism, spans the gray area. Gardening tips and hobby "news" pretty clearly fall at the entertainment end. Warnings about imminent natural disasters or acute domestic security threats (such as air raids or terrorist attacks) are considered so important that broadcast media (even non-news channels) usually interrupt other programming to announce them. A medical story about a new treatment for breast cancer, or a report about local ground water pollution might fall in between. So might book reviews, or coverage of religion. On the other hand, people frequently find hobbies and entertainment to be worthwhile parts of their lives and so "importance" on a personal level is rather subjective.

Infotainment is generally identified by its entertaining nature through the use of flashy graphics, fast-paced editing, music, and the use sensationalism or satire. Popular examples include Larry King Live,[12] Entertainment Tonight, Hannity and Colmes, The Daily Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.[13]

The broadcast of important or interesting events was originally meant simply to inform society of local or international events for their own safety and awareness. However, local news broadcasters are more regularly commodifying local events to provoke titillation and entertainment in viewers. Commodification is known as the process by which material objects are turned into marketable goods with monetary (exchange) value.[14] Essential qualities of human beings and their products are converted into commodities, into things for buying and selling on the market,[15] just as entertaining stories are sold to buy the attention of viewers.

Commodity fetishism is the process through which commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production (the labour that produced them and the context in which they were produced) and filled instead with the abstract meaning (usually through advertising).[16] At their worst, the media's appetite for telling and selling stories leads them not only to document tragedy, but also to misrepresent or exploit it[17] As often seen in the news (with stories of extreme obesity or unusual deformities) present-day "infotainment" commodifies humans through their personal tragedies or scandals, providing entertainment and titillation to public viewers.

The topic of news media today being more commonly considered “infotainment” has increased with the growing popularity and use of social media applications. These popular social media outlets are what German theorist Jürgen Habermas would define as the "public sphere". According to Habermas, it defines a social space (which may be virtual) in which citizens come together to debate and discuss the present issues of their society. The term has been used more recently in the plural to refer to the multiple public spheres in which people debate contemporary issues.[16] In the case of social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, which were originally created for the purpose of connecting, re-connecting and sharing personal thoughts and information with public, they have now provided a new medium for the spread of "infotainment" and exploitation of public matters. There is no doubt that these social media websites are dominating, and what is so pressing about the matter is the fact that alongside cell phone technology, these ways of online communication are becoming prominent to the simple relaying of informative news. Of necessity, a commodity-based society produces such phantom objectivity, and in so doing it obscures its roots.[18] The public society are relying more frequently on television news broadcasting and now social media outlets to obtain a mixture of information and entertainment updates which are known as "infotainment."

The terms "infotainment" and "infotainer" were first used in September 1980 at the Joint Conference of ASLIB, the Institute of Information Scientists, and the Library Association in Sheffield, UK. The Infotainers were a group of British information scientists who put on comedy shows at these professional conferences between 1980 and 1990. In 1983, "infotainment" began to see more popular usage,[1] and the infotainment style gradually began to replace soft news with communications theorists.[13]

An earlier, slightly variant term, "infortainment" was the theme of the 1974 convention of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, the association of college radio stations in the United States. The event held April 5–7, 1974, at the Statler Hilton Hotel (now the Hotel Pennsylvania), defined the term as the "nexus between Information and Entertainment".

• Amusing Ourselves to Death
• Documentary television
• Edutainment
• In-car entertainment
• Infomercial – Long television commercial
• Junk food news – A sardonic term for news stories that deliver "sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia"
• Least objectionable program
• Product placement – The act of deliberately mentioning or showing a product or brand, often in exchange for compensation
• Subliminal stimuli – Sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Infotainment.

• "Soft news and critical journalism eroding audiences"
• "Tough times for hard news, but good journalism goes on"