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What constitutes news?

Martin Waxman and I talk about what constitutes news and how easy it is to trick not just the Interwebz, but the news media as well.

Case in point: A young woman was practicing her twerking in her apartment when her roommate opened the door into her and she fell onto a coffee table full of lit candles. Her yoga pants caught on fire and the video ends with her screaming and jumping around, trying to put out the flames.

Jimmy Kimmel invited her on the show and it came out the video was a fake, the girl is a stunt actor, and yet…all the news media covered it as if it were a real thing.

As well, The Onion had a piece by Meredith Artley, the managing editor of CNN.com, about why Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance was their top story of the day.

It’s an interesting conundrum. We are attracted to the train wrecks, which create the eyeballs and the clicks, but we complain when the media doesn’t cover the more serious news of the day, such as what’s happening in Syria or Kenya.

So what makes the news? If you are in charge of a brand’s journalism, do you cover what’s important or what drives eyeballs? Do we have a right to complain about the viral videos and twerking if we are more interested in the gossip and train wrecks instead of the hard news?

We would love your thoughts.

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.