Justin Bieber Takes Tabloids To Task, This Won’t Be Pretty But It Is Time
Justin Bieber has given the media a foretaste of what to expect from his new music, in a four-part missive posted to his Twitter account.
The teen singer, who has become a gossip outlet godsend in recent months, expressed palpable frustration in the Tuesday messages which were directed to the tabloid element of the press.
“Interesting how some people in the media wanna take shots at me for no reason,” Bieber began.”[A]ll good. keeping it positive over here. all about the music.”
The Canadian’s comments come just days after the latest rumor to do the news cycle rounds, namely TMZ’s “fake” photoshoot rider story. That journalistic lapse, lamented here.
Currently on his recently resumed Believe world tour, it’s impossible to know which stories Bieber is referring to mainly because of the number.
But of the most recent, it’s likely the said rider item and endless scandal-narratives that attend any candid pictures, idle remarks by rap-rockers, a vulnerable girl, rumors, even the clothes Bieber wears, prejudgments about incidents at an allegation stage, ceaseless assumption-making about ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez, possible new squeeze Jordan Ozuna and harmless fan encounters, are on the singer’s red-circled mental list.
And he’s right.
It is interesting that entertainment writers, journalists, editors, and media outlet owners — in most cases, but not all — demonstrably prefer baiting news stories that sensationalize and pander to viewers and readers’ basest impulses. But, the economics of scandal has been ever thus.
Heart-warming stories like the pop star’s meet with Marisa Cox — a 10-year-old Down Syndrome and transplant patient and four-year-old Makayla Gonsalves who suffers from a rare brain cancer condition and began a nine month chemotherapy course 24 hours after attending Bieber’s second recent Staples Center concert — received considerably less media coverage than the speculative orgy that followed an inaugural Instagram video the singer posted over a week ago.
But what does that say about where our industry’s priorities lie, not to mention a body of people who presumably became communicators to say/write/broadcast something worth communicating?
Bieber’s next tweet informed his millions of followers that at his Oklahoma Chesapeake Energy Arena concert tonight, 200 tickets have been reserved for students from schools destroyed in the May tornadoes.
Ending on a reflective but positive note that echoed his manager Scooter Braun’s recent supportive statement, Bieber concluded:
“[S]ome decisions in life aren’t easy… but nothing great was ever easy. be great. in life you gotta know who you are. know your heart. love the people that love you. and be kind. be GREAT!. #wwjd.”
That sound? A 19-year-old moving through his mistakes and coming into his own under unimaginable scrutiny, a commercially motivated tabloid agenda, and the pressures of a rite-of-passage world tour.
In some inevitable quarters, the push back has already begun.
Justin Bieber — Check Out My Little Boy Muscles http://t.co/gL5OjkTPTq pic.twitter.com/TpenmxuzHJ
— TMZ (@TMZ) July 2, 2013
