Exploiting Gossip

We are continuing our "Taking Sides" series on the problem of gossip. Last week, we looked at people who could be considered proponent of gossip. Yesterday, we looked at how technology exacerbates the problem. Today, we think together about who who want to exploit it.

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If some people think that gossip is morally good, many others believe that gossip is good business. In Gossip: The Inside Scoop, Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke tell the story of the burgeoning gossip industry from Walter Winchell to the magazine People.¹ They celebrate the gossip reporter as a kind of glorified anthropologist but also discuss the seamy side of the gossip business and attempts by celebrities and other public figures to fight back.

Politics is one area where Levin and Arluke are certain that gossip reporting is vital. “Media gossip has been a positive force in American life, if not indispensable to the democratic process. As a form of public opinion, it acts to constrain the behavior of our political leaders and national celebrities by making it almost impossible for them to hide from their constituents, and by giving us the ‘inside scoop’ on their unethical behavior.”²

Gail Collins seems to agree. The New York Times columnist’s book Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics tells the topsy turvy political story of the United States through the lens of gossip.³ Gossip, as a political tool, is not new by any means, but it has been unpredictable in its effects. “Gossip about politicians provides an insight into what’s bothering Americans–maybe not as precisely as a random cross-sample poll or the voting public, but with a little more flavor. Issues that create enormous anxiety in one generation may not even raise an eyebrow for another.”⁴

One thing is clear–gossip sells. In Dish, journalist Jeannette Walls narrates the story of “How gossip became the news and the news became just another show.”⁵ Walls goes deeper and further than Levin and Arluke into the origins and inner workings of gossip columnists and periodicals like People and the National Enquirer. She demonstrates how hungry Americans are for juicy gossip about public figures and how willing they are to pay for it.

But there is a higher, hidden cost to be paid. I felt more defiled with each chapter of these books as I read them. Even the well-paid purveyors of gossip magazines have regretted their actions. Richard Stolley, the former publisher of People has admitted, “I think gossip can be the enemy of civilization. . . . I think the dissemination of cruel, mean-spirited information which is fundamentally disturbing to a human being, to his family, to his friends, is a blow to civilized society.”⁶

It is possible that, in a democratic republic, the publishing of sordid but true details about politicians can be helpful for choosing men and women of genuinely good character to be our leaders. But, by and large, it is better for us to give a wide berth to any publication of gossip. “A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much” (Prov 20:19).

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¹Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke, Gossip: The Inside Scoop (New York: Plenum Press, 1987). See also Ralph L. Rosnow and Gary Alan Fine, Rumor and Gossip: A Social Psychology of Hearsay (New York: Elsevier Science, 1976).

²Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke, Gossip: The Inside Scoop (New York: Plenum Press, 1987), 194.

³Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1998).

⁴Ibid., 19.

⁵Jeannette Walls, Dish: How Gossip Became the News and the News Became Just Another Show (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000).

⁶Quoted in Jeannette Walls, Dish: How Gossip Became the News and the News Became Just Another Show (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000), 331.