Precisely my point

Barrymore wants everybody to lighten up - Yahoo! News

From the tone of her interview, Barrymore seems to acknowledge, if unknowingly, the reason driving much of the gossip. People like playing with other people's lives without risk to their own, so talking about their personal lives makes it much easier for them to not focus on their faults. You can say that getting trashed is wrong, but it's a bit hard to do when the person who is doing it is your friend. It's quite another when you don't know the person. And stars take just as much advantage of that to boost their own fame.