Here’s a good example of media distortion, shocking by the Daily Mail. They’ve posted a story about Brad Pitt today with this headline:
The article clearly claims that Brad is “seeing someone”, suggesting that he’s dating a specific person. When you read the article though, the information actually comes from a PEOPLE story, and the Daily Mail links to it…but in the PEOPLE story, the words “seeing someone” don’t actually come up. And there is no mention that Brad is dating one particular person. Instead, PEOPLE cites a source who tells them that:
"[Brad] has a large group of artsy friends in L.A. that he hangs out with. He's dating, but is not in a serious relationship."
First of all, the word “artsy” is a gossip trigger for me now because of Brad’s ex’s ex, Justin Theroux, and when he and Jennifer Aniston broke up and all the gossip about him being bored in LA and preferring New York for its “artsy and edgy” vibe instead. Really hope Jen’s next partner is much less pretentious than his predecessors.
Back to the Daily Mail though, what they’ve done is taking the information from PEOPLE and created classic clickbait. We went from a pretty general statement – “he’s dating, but is not in a serious relationship” – to the Daily Mail’s stretch, which is that he’s “seeing someone”. It’s adds an entirely different dimension to the story and while it’s not necessarily, by the books, a lie, because if Brad is “dating” than I guess you could say that, yes, from time to time, he’s “seeing someone”, but let’s not pretend that our collective cultural understanding of the expression “seeing someone” is read in a casual way.
But then again, by now none of should be surprised by the Daily Mail’s daily f-ckery. By their standards of f-ckery, I suppose this is rather mild.
As for Brad and this PEOPLE story, it’s a puff piece ahead of the release of Bullet Train on August 5, short on detail but big on fluff, making sure to convince people that he does indeed spend time with his children, even though he hasn’t actually been seen publicly with them for years, and … my favourite part… “loves creativity”, LOL.
Wow.
An artist who “loves creativity”, you don’t say.
I really wish “sources” could be better trained with how they express themselves because these quotes are often insipid AF – the opposite of creativity, ironically.
Still, a publicist’s gotta do what a publicist has got to do, which is to generate good publicity for their celebrity client. And in Brad’s case, this story may be attempting to offset the other headline circulating about him right now which is that he spent $40 million on a new house in California, which probably isn’t going down very well for the people in New Orleans who are suing him and the Make It Right foundation for building and then selling them homes that fell apart. Then again, it’s not like that lawsuit was widely reported on in mainstream American media. Brad always gets the benefit of fluff…
And the fluff we are being served by PEOPLE is that “under the circumstances” he is “living his best life”. So much so that insiders went out of their way to give the magazine that message.
