Shilling for celebrities and NBC

Yesterday morning the New York Post had a story headlined: Arnie does no favors for NBC. While that may be true, on the evidence I saw the other day MSNBC.com does favors for all celebrities, Arnie included, and for NBC, too.

I took a peek last Thursday at MSNBC.com to see whether my poor opinion of the revised entertainment section held up. It no longer covers news of music or television or movies, as it sometimes tried to do in earlier days. (Full disclosure: I used to run the section.) It now covers news of celebrities in music, celebrities in television, celebrities in movies.

In other words, if there's no celebrity, there is no news. The section (and much of the front cover) has become the equivalent of a PR wire. Here were the headlines for 12 consecutive news stories in the order posted by the entertainment section:

1. "Madonna goes global with children's book"
2. "Arnold's announcement big win for Leno"
3. "Lange tours war-torn east Congo"
4. "Luring celebs with free cigarettes"
5. "Media circus converges on Bryant"
6. "Omar Shariff struck Paris police"
7. "Gary Coleman for California governor"
8. Scoop: "Cameron Diaz's photographic past"
9. "J.Lo standing by her man"
10. "Six Flags says no to Marilyn Manson"
11. "Film out of Mother Teresa festival"
12. "Heather Locklear signs deal"

At least the Scoop column is supposed to be about celebrities. What excuse does MSNBC.com have for all those other entertainment features? That the news about war-torn east Congo is Jessica Lange taking a tour? That trivia about Madonna, Omar Shariff, J.Lo and Marilyn Manson rates five separate stories?

Need I mention MSNBC.com's self-interest in trumpeting Arnold's brass-ring candidacy for California governor as a victory for the "Tonight" show with Jay Leno? Presumably, readers understand that NBC owns both the show and half of MSNBC.com. But disclosure of that small fact, per Journalism 1.0, was nowhere in the "news" story. Nor was it in the three-paragraph "news" story that began: "NBC is back in business with Heather Locklear."

MSNBC.com's celebrity-mongering is, of course, not unusual. This morning's edition of USA Today quotes Andy Rooney on the agenda he foresees for CBS's "60 Minutes": "Everybody knows changes are in the wind. Management wants changes. They have been pressing us to be more like '48 Hours' or '60 Minutes II.' Stories about J. Lo and that sort of thing.''

I wonder why he left out "Dateline NBC." Maybe he doesn't watch that one.