All Blog Posts from Public Eye

"I was in an airport [last Wednesday] when that whole Paris Hilton interview was going down. I was watching 'The Situation Room' and they were talking about this interview that hadn't happened yet and then counting down to it. I'll never watch CNN again.

"I mean it. I think something's happened to news and entertainment. News has become entertainment. They don't give you what you need, they give you what you want. And entertainment has taken a turn, too. People aren't much interested in virtuosity. They just want to feel better when they watch something and that changes it all. So I don't know, maybe that's why Broadway was so great and I'm going to Vegas."

-- Tony Danza, Fourth of July emcee, King of Danzitions and former talk show host opining to the Washington Post about the newsmedia's excesses.

"Someone said this is the second biggest guest you can get in the world. The first would be Osama bin Laden. Now, what is that saying about us? The first biggest get would be this villain. The second biggest get would be this girl. Why? So I think that's an extraordinary concept, a statement of what we are as a society."

-- Larry King, indulging in hyperbole before his sit-down with you know who. Click here for the actual definition of ‘extraordinary.’

(Major league tip-of-the-hat to TVNewser.)

Marseilles? Oui. You-Know-Who? Non! (With a big juicy asterisk)

The only way that Us Magazine is going to feature the words “Paris Hilton” this week is if they’re talking about a hotel in France.

Us Magazine – you may know them from their recent investigative pieces unveiling Jessica Simpson’s weight loss and Nick Lachey’s romantic life – has decided to take the journalistic high ground. They’re not going to talk about the recent jailbird for the entire issue this week.

Okay, well except for that “100% Paris Free” on the cover.

And except for their Web site focusing a lot of attention on the celebutante.

And, yeah, except for their staffers on TV talking non-stop about her.

But, you know, those are the exceptions that prove the rule.

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The way that news outlets are covering the release of Paris Hilton has CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller calling for apologies…

A lot of people in the news media – especially in television and radio – owe you an apology.

They think so little of what you’re interested in that many of us led our newscasts overnight and this morning with the release from prison of heiress and would-be celebrity Paris Hilton.

When a story is first in a newscast, we’re saying we think it’s important. We’re saying we think it’s something you need to know about it.

Can any of us say we need to know about Paris Hilton’s release from jail after serving a few weeks for a motor vehicle infraction?

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You know, we really don't write enough about Paris Hilton here. So! Here's your daily dose of Paris commentary, courtesy of a (maybe just a tiny bit sarcastic) Bob Schieffer:

Face The Nation did not get the big interview with Paris Hilton.

I feel terrible about it.

I haven't felt so low since one of our competitors broke into programming to report that the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith's body had begun. Getting scooped on a big story is never fun, not then, not ever. And we never got to first base on that story either, which is why we tried to be competitive on this one.

We held strategy sessions on how to stay ahead on the Paris story. In the finest network tradition, we blamed each other for not getting the interview. We even leaked the infighting to competitors. But nothing worked.

All those big-time bookers dangled all those deals in front of Paris' family, and we were just out of our league. Heck, we couldn't even figure out what league we were in.

Read it all here.

NBC News is disputing a report that the network is paying Paris Hilton for her first interview after she is released from jail. There are conflicting reports in the press, with the New York Times reporting that NBC outbid ABC's $100,000 offer and the Washington Post suggesting that "a mega-payment [from NBC to Hilton] might go toward personal video and images of the celebrity party girl." That would be one method for getting around the criticism that you're "paying" for the interview that still allows you to, you know, pay for it. There are plenty more.

Newspapers today are filled with tales of network tactics for convincing interviewees to speak to them that don't involve showing up at their door with a bag of cash emblazoned with a dollar sign.

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"We don't want there to be confusion on this overall policy: that we don't pay for interviews."

--Bill Wheatley, vice president of NBC News, speaking to the New York Times in 2003.

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"NBC has agreed to pay as much as $1 million for Paris Hilton's first after-jail interview, which will appear on the 'Today' show."

--New York Post, today. NBC did not return the Post's call for comment and Hilton's rep said he "can't confirm or deny" the report.

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"Whatever happened to the pretense that the networks don't pay for interviews? Have we just left that behind entirely?"

--New York 1 anchor Pat Kiernan, commenting on the Post story this morning.

Something to keep in mind when considering the media-driven outrage over Paris Hilton's "early" release from prison:

Paris Hilton will end up serving more time behind bars than the vast majority of inmates sent to L.A. County Jail for similar offenses, according to a [Los Angeles] Times analysis of jail records…Had Hilton left jail for good after four days, her stint behind bars would have been similar to those served by 60% of those inmates.

The press corps hasn't exactly deigned to contextualize the celeb's sentence, even though analysts were pointing out the relative injustice of it back on June 7. Instead of clear-headed and informed reports about Hilton's jailtime, we' ve mostly seen antagonistic stories that feed into our class resentment and angst-ridden relationship with celebrity culture.

And people think ideological bias is the biggest problem with the media?

Never say never, eh?

Last night, "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric uttered the dreaded two words that she had vowed never to speak on the show: Paris. Hilton. In Boston a month ago, Couric had said, “We have a precious amount of time on the CBS 'Evening News' and I don’t think we need to ever utter the name Paris Hilton."

Last night, however, Hilton took up a fair chunk of that precious airtime. (The reason, of course, was the heiress' early release from jail.) The "Evening News" story, it's only fair to note, was less about Hilton than the reaction that greeted her release. "The bar for outrage over celebrity behavior is set pretty high in Hollywood these days," Couric said by way of introduction to a Bill Whitaker report, "but Paris Hilton's very early release from jail has brought howls of protest and cries of a double standard." Click on the video box to watch the report.

America's not-always-equitable justice system, of course, is a worthy topic for a news show, and if it takes the release from jail of a celebrity to get it on the news, it's hard to be too upset. But the nature of the Hilton coverage has been downright embarrassing. Instead of looking at the reality of the situation – and segueing into a discussion of the loopholes, double standards and arbitrariness one often finds in the legal system – most media outlets are pandering to news consumers' class resentment.

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Paris Hilton has been released from jail. Who cares! Why is the media covering it! What is happening to journalism! Etcetera!

I realize I might now be accused of being dismissive about the Big Journalistic Issues. But I've written the "Sky Is Falling" post before. And we've all read it, from my pen or others, a million times. If you really can't get enough of that kind of thing, however, be patient: I'm sure that there will be something along those lines up on Romenesko soon.

Anyway: Check out CBSNews.com's headline about the latest Paris news, now splashed across the top of the site. It's "Paris Hilton Is Free!" Not, you'll note, "Paris Hilton Is Free." There's an exclamation point in there.* You don't see exclamation points in headlines too often, for good reason. Just add exclamation points to the headlines of two of today's other top stories and see how they look: "Bush Set For Tough Talk With Putin!" "Man Drowns In Bid To Retrieve Cell Phone!" Um, yay?

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