In an article USA Today posted on its website on Thursday, writer Ann Oldenburg commented on the “bad day” actress Lindsay Lohan had this week. Oldenburg reported that Lohan had been charged with four different crimes in two states all in one day. The actress was arrested in New York for assault and then charged by the Santa Monica Police Department for giving false information to a police officer, resisting a police officer, and reckless driving in a case relating to a wreck she had last June.
The article was an unusual and amusing entertainment piece, but what was more interesting to me than the story was the way Oldenburg framed the account to make it appeal to the reader. Humorous headlines and plays on words drew me into clicking on the article. Then, graphic pictures of Lohan’s totaled Porsche decorate the page and encourage me to read the story that was periodically interrupted by links to other related articles and entertaining headlines. Finally, by the last paragraph was a picture of Lohan leaving the Los Angeles Women’s Center as a reiteration of the terrible condition this star is supposedly spiraling into. However, is it really that bad? Or, does Oldenburg’s plays on words, judgement statements like “bad,” and images make us as the audience just think it is a tragic situation? I do not know Oldenburg’s motivations, but I know that I was certainly engulfed by her article as I entertainingly read every word. That is the power of the media. It has the power to captivate us, real us in, and manipulate us into feeling and believing whatever it presents to us. We constantly fall victim to it’s influence through articles, commercials and ads, and even now, as you read this blog, and I manipulate you into believing that I’m manipulating you.
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