As a journalist, there are a couple of questions I get asked often. The first is, “Did you do your own make-up today?” (In a kind, concerned way so I know it’s more a welfare check than a compliment.) The second is, “Why is the news so negative, can’t you just give us good news?”
Depending on my mood (which like the Irish weather is mostly bad with pockets of sunshine), I have a few answers. One is that it’s our job to find out information that people would like to sweep under the carpet and that news is rarely good. No political adviser is sitting on a report that says the government is doing a great job, hoping the public never finds out that hospitals are being built on time and too many houses have been constructed. The other is that actually, conflict is at the heart of most news.
Since wars have existed, people have reported on them. But conflict isn’t relegated to the international news segment. It isn’t just about what full-time madman in charge of the nuclear codes is up to now. Sports reporting is about conflict both on and off the field. Bitter rivalries, big match upsets and criticisms of coaches. A large part of political reporting is nameless sniping and leaking. Like a senior infant telling you about their day when you pick them up, it can be a running report card of who’s fallen out with who, who’s playing nice this week and why, just (hopefully) with fewer instances of head lice.
We report on conflict because humans are drawn to it, like nosy moths to a gossipy lamp. The audiences have always decided what makes the news. You used to do it by buying the paper with the headlines you wanted to read more about. Now you do it with your clicks. The feedback is instant. Editors know what you want to read about before you’ve hit the bottom of the page. While outlets will always try to cover objectively worthy news, it would be a lie to say reader interest doesn’t influence what stories get a run and how much resources get devoted to them.
So before anyone gets their thumbs ready to comment “Why is this news? Who cares” under reports of the Beckham family drama this week, the answer is: “Loads of people, that’s why”. That’s why there’s been international coverage for days. Front page articles. TV packages. Instagram reels and radio bulletins reporting Brooklyn Beckham’s statement on the rift with his family which involves wedding dress spats, social media blocking and one alleged “very inappropriate” mother of the groom dance. Then came the secondary content – the podcasts analysing the Beckham family’s PR strategy. Articles on the psychology of family alienation. And the tweets, oh my, the tweets (I will never call it X). After the Coldplay couple scandal, it was one of the best weeks on the internet. And why?
Because we couldn’t get enough of someone else’s messy relationship drama. Unlike Harry and Meghan’s “were you silent or silenced” interview, we didn’t even need a sit down with Oprah to pry out the details. He chose Instagram to tell his 16 million followers that his mum had called him evil for sitting his nana at his wedding top table. At that moment we learned the son of multimillionaires was just like our auntie ranting about her ex not paying child maintenance on Facebook after a few white wines. And the world ate it up.
Just as we did Twink’s “zip up your mickey” and Aoife McGregor’s “the neeeeeeccckkk” voicemails. Some people more than others get a deep and grubby thrill from watching people fall out with each other. I’ve seen the way people’s eyes light up as they earwig into the couple having a difficult conversation next to them. Kicking their dinner companion under the table to stop blathering on so they can listen in. It was such a common occurrence when I was living in Dublin that my friend and I had pretend conversations when we noticed other diners were doing it to us. “And so I said to him I wouldn’t marry him after the incident with baked beans unless he gave me his grandmother’s ring – all he just has to do is dig her up.”
Brooklyn Peltz Beckham and Nicola Peltz Beckham at the Netflix Beckham UK premiere. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Why are we so interested in the family foibles of a man who couldn’t even take a photo of an elephant? It could just be rich people Schadenfreude. Or it could be that we enjoy raking over other people’s conflicts so we can actively avoid our own. When we’re playing amateur detective over whether or not Posh Spice really refused to design a wedding dress, we don’t have to confront all the things left unsaid in our own families. Or the secret resentment that’s turning into a stomach ulcer.
[ There’s a whiff of ancient Rome about the Beckham family feudOpens in new window ]