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I am trying to figure out this question. It's just an inquisitive thought.
Does a musician, author, novelist, poet's personal life affect a human being's personal view of that epic figure rather than enjoying these figures' personal poetry, short story, novel, a novella, and other works?
If no then why do epic figures are constantly criticized for their personal life? Is it fair?
In general, our main impression of someone colors aspects of their details. It's called the halo effect or when it has a negative tone it's sometimes called the "pitchfork effect" or "horns effect". The positive halo effect is definitely exploited in advertising.
As for why the tabloid press has been on the rise, that's a more complex issue. I'm not sure there's a single good explanation for it. But regarding its contents, some evolutionary psychologists propose that it has contents that would have been relevant to our (ancient) past:
We examined the content of three successful tabloids, using a list of evolutionary-based topics created a priori. The results indicate that tabloids reflect fitness-relevant topics that were important throughout our evolutionary past. The tabloids equally represent both sexes, and while they mostly concentrate on entertainers and royalty, they do pay some attention to unknown individuals. By correlating who and what is gossiped about, we found celebrities are more often the subjects of stories involving wealth, while unknown individuals are almost always gossiped about within the context of life-threatening events.
