by Maggie Tiojakin

It's considered the lowest common denominator in journalism: holding up public figures to scrutiny by rummaging through their garbage, hounding them for every little embarrassing smidgen of information from their private lives, feeding on the carcasses of their failed marriages, bitter separations and tragic Kodak moments.

But we still call it journalism because it's news. At least, for some people.

Over the last few months, the tangled divorce saga of music power couple Maya Estianti and Ahmad Dhani has drawn a posse of entertainment journalists like ants to sugar or flies to you-know-what. They have camped outside the couple's home, the courthouse where the drama is being played out and the haunts of their three young sons to squeeze every last melodramatic drop out of the story.

Public opinion is now firmly divided between the pro-Maya and pro-Ahmad camps, with allegations of polygamy and adultery (was he having a fling with her former singing partner?) and the role of the modern career woman (should she have spent more time at home with the kids?) thrown into the sordid mix.

Their story is only one of the many on the constantly revolving merry-go-round of celebrity lives splayed before the cameras, involuntarily exposed for scrutiny as everything else falls apart. It makes us, the viewers, savages, giving us a kind of power we can't even begin to comprehend. And the media plays it to perfection.

"It's a degrading business," says Mustafa Nurdian, a journalist at Detik.com. "It gives a bad name to other journalists who are doing serious work. First, it exposes people during their weakest moments. Second, it exaggerates events to unbelievably large proportions, plus it has no educational or informational value."

"When did we ever stop thinking that public figures are anything other than ordinary people who make mistakes, have affairs, get fired from their jobs, have babies?" he asks.

Uya Warsani, a content editor at RCTI, finds a simple explanation for the phenomenon.

"One word: sensationalism," she says. "We target public figures because they're visible. Sure, it gets a little out of hand sometimes, but that's just the by-product of fame. You play with fire, you get burned - it's quite self-explanatory. You want the people to love you, well ... this is love. Love is obsession."

Sensationalism can push up ratings and grab the attention of the public, without much regard for the truth. In print form, it makes for light reading; on television, it's the equivalent of popcorn-shoving and soda-slurping in cinemas, except that many of the viewers take what they are being fed to be cold, hard facts.

But those in the infotainment industry argue they are not simply ladling out untruths.

"Entertainment journalists are no different from any other journalists," says Uya. "We have the same codes for pursuing news - we don't make news, we report it. We all work the same grueling hours for the same meager pay, and if it looks like we're fishing too deep or knocking too loud ... how is it different from war journalists who are hunting down insurgents or politicians?"

Mustafa disagrees.

"There is a difference between exploiting news subjects for an unknowing public and exploiting the unknowing public with news subjects," he says. "Entertainment journalists exploit the public, they use the public as puppets, steering them where they will. News is fact-based, rumors are something else."

Originally, infotaiment - combining information and entertainment - aimed to provide educational information presented in an entertaining fashion. Things like gardening and cooking, or learning how to make origami.

It has evolved into stories on the hottest scandals involving celebrities, although there are sometimes "softer" stories, such as the problem of one celebrity who just cannot shake her nail-biting habit or another's decision to forsake wigs for hair extensions. Many of the programs are produced by the same production houses, so there is often uniformity to the presentation and story angles.

Evi is a 26-year-old store manager in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta. Every afternoon, she watches Silet to keep herself updated on the comings and goings of public personalities. She says that watching the show gives her the feeling that they, too, are humans with flaws and insecurities just like anyone else.

"I don't laugh at [the public figures] when they're miserable or undergoing tough ordeals," says Evi. "I sympathize with them, I feel sorry for them. I do think that there are viewers who love to see some public figures go down, but not all of us are like that. Some of us watch these shows for mere entertainment."

Some will argue that the programs are ways of educating people to understand better their social surroundings. That the process of "humanizing" public personages is all part of what makes communication vital. It comes at an expense, no doubt, but perhaps it's the kind of expense we can afford and justify.

"Oh, come on, I don't care how smart a person is, if they tell me they've never watched an infotainment show, they must be lying," says Evi, smiling. "It has nothing to do with intellect, it's just something fun."

But Mustafa is still a holdout.

"I think whoever brings news to the people should act responsibly," he says. "People make light of these things because they feel they don't contribute to the moral hazards they have helped create by endorsing this type of entertainment. Just because it's fun to watch doesn't make it any less outrageous."

"Appreciate it for what it is," says Uya. "News is a lot of things. It doesn't have to be one thing or the other. It's made of events with strange, sometimes emotional, appeals. This is how we live, this is how we're going to continue to live."