News and "news"

A recent study has shown that fewer people are getting their news from television or the newspaper and that there are more people in the public relations business than in journalism.

I certainly have found both those findings to be true. News ratings have gone down as well as newspaper subscriptions. And if you go to websites such as yahoo.com or huffingtonpost.com looking for news, the entertainment industry items are mixed in there, and in yahoo’s case especially, rather liberally.

Actress Jennifer Aniston hasn’t done anything noteworthy in decades, but she is in “the news" every week — whether it’s for buying the latest purse or going on vacation with her boyfriend, her publicist has kept the public uptodate.

Other “news” items might be photos of celebrities or so-called celebrities without makeup. Oh, my.

In magazines, if an actress loses weight, which is really part of her job, it’s on the front cover as a miraculous event. Inevitably, the diet includes eating next to nothing cooked by a chef and five hours a day of exercise with a personal trainer.