Heralding more sexy stories
Another Herald article accompanied by sexy photo of young model posing on red carpet, and with sexy title Court bans sexy little thing. The headline seems to imply that the court has banned this sexy little model from something/somewhere….but it’s misleading. The opening line, “Nobody can call themselves a “sexy little thing”, a Manhattan court has ruled”, isn’t very informative, and is also misleading - though catchy of course!
The article is simply about an American judge’s advice to fashion designer that she could be sued by another fashion company for trademark infringement.
In fact, it’s a very dull little article about a small American court case - it doesn’t seem very news worthy - all it’s got going for it is a sex factor manufactured by the journalist and photographer. Admittedly, it is in the Fashion section of the paper.
See my other post about the (over)use of sexual imagery on the SMH website.
This relates to the theory that nowadays, ‘News focuses less on providing what has been traditionally thought of as the information necessary for a democracy and concentrates instead on entertaining audiences’ (Williams and Delli Carpini, 2000) and that there are ‘increasingly blurry boundaries between news and entertainment and the overall celebration of commercial culture’ (Hartley, 1996). I think this is particularly prevalent in regards to news about gender and sexuality.
