I'm guilty. I'm not a fan of Kim Kardashian. Every time I hear Kardashian come up in the news, my first thought is: "In the name of all that is secular, WHAT NOW?!" And yet, my apathy is being tested fairly regularly this last year. Go figure.
Irony works in mysterious ways.
I happened to be dropping the kid off at camp this morning, and lo and behold, our lovely celebrity was the topic of GTA talk-radio discussion. Jokes abounded about how pregnancy would cut into her "busy schedule of doing nothing."
I admit, I rolled my eyes in agreement. I'M SORRY. But you have to admit there's precedent to do so.
As legions of mothers can attest, having a baby can be a hard business on body and soul. For someone who seems to be in the business of marketing their body (you know this is true, new age feminism / liberism /wtf-ever cry or not), having someone else bear your kid makes a certain logistical sense. Certainly, it ain't cheap to do, but if anybody could afford to have someone else take the brunt of the physical damage from procreation, Kim certainly could. And there's plenty of women who are willing to take on that kind of uterine burden for love or for payday.
A quick Google confirmed that this was generally true. Kim Kardashian did, indeed, have a pregnant surrogate mom who is three months along. What I wasn't expecting (quite possibly because celebrity news is something that's "not my jam" and I don't read it unless it's impinging on my life uncomfortably), is that there was a reason Kim had a surrogate. An honest-to-goodness, legit, nobody-can-blame-her-not-even-the-haters-can-hate reason.
Pregnancy for Kim Kardashian is high risk for a medical reason. Placenta accretia. If you don't know what placentia accretia is, you might want to ask yourself how strong your stomach is before you click or Google to read more.
Getting preggo isn't for the weak, yo. You can get things like placenta accretia and death can be a result.
Well, yeah, I suppose not wanting to die is a good legit reason to maybe go the surrogate route. Okay, Kim, you got a pass from me. False alarm on the wtf front.
That's when I got pissed that I had to go digging that deep to find out the truth. I made a judgement based on the bias of real news I had gotten from legit sites and a radio show who conveniently omitted (or put it down near the bottom somewhere in small print) why.
Then I got pissed that I needed to know why at all. I mean, if Kim had been anybody else, would I have given a damn? Nope. I may have been curious, but I probably would have assumed infertility, and more importantly, none of my business.
Even those of us who work in the industry, like me, have to be ever on guard. Big story: "some spoiled rich chick has a surrogate." Reasons? Ah, reasons spoil the misleading title clickbait possibilities. Not to mention the reason for an article in the first place. Hard pass on salient facts that otherwise make something newsworthy anything but.
I know clickbait titling is something that we can't get away from. I agree it should motivate people to read into what you have to say.
But we have to fight the kind of misleading news, useless clickbaits, and blurbage that causes people to skip reading an article in depth or makes them make a snap judgement, because all it does is prove that the media thinks honesty ruins a good time for them. It makes the media feel untrustworthy. It makes my whole job feel devalued.
I hate that. News needs to be valued for information. Not skewed to become entertainment.
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