ABSTRACT
Celebrity stories, especially regarding Hollywood scandals, have long been regarded as guilty pleasures for both audiences and journalists. Pandering to market tastes has pushed celebrity news to the bottom of journalism’s food chain. “Public consciousness tends to perceive celebrity coverage in terms of a dirty pleasure of sensationalist tabloid reporters who capitalize on exposing the private lives of the famous” (Dubied & Hanitzsch 2014, 137). News audiences consistently tell Pew researchers they pay little attention to celebrities and scandals, and complain that these get too much attention. Yet, they knew more about such stories than about virtually any other category; on average, the public correctly answered 60 percent of the questions dealing with scandal, entertainment, and crime (Parker and Deane, 1997). The popularity—now evident algorithmically—of this disreputable genre notwithstanding, scholars have also treated reporting on Hollywood scandals, especially sex scandals, as unimportant; at best it constitutes escapism, an addictive weapon of mass distraction. But Hollywood scandal coverage can be significant and impactful in explaining and exposing broad vectors in social relations and power structures.
