By SHAKIRA MOLET

Last weekend, the media went crazy covering the Oscars. On almost every new media outlet, there was a section on the best and worst looks on the red carpet as well as the winners for each category, but is that what should have been focused on?

Instead of clothing being front page news, it should have been replaced by several aspects of the Oscars that have significant news and social value. For example, when Patricia Arquette won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she used her acceptance speech time to voice her opinions on wage inequality.

In her speech, Arquette declared, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women.The truth is, the older women get, the less money they make,” she said. “It is time for us. Equal means equal.”

Another example of a speech that touched an important subject was Best Documentary winner, Dana Perry. When accepting her award, Perry dedicated her speech to her son who had committed suicide.

“I lost my son,” Perry told reporters after the speech. “We need to talk about suicide out loud to try to work against the stigma and silence around suicide because the best prevention for suicide is awareness and discussion and not trying sweep it under the rug.”

Despite the fact that wage inequality and suicide are still present issues in our society, there was not as much coverage on these particular speeches as there was about who was wearing what. It’s time that journalism, whether it is entertainment new or hard news, gets its act together and report what deserves to be reported.