The US media is often accused of having blinders when it comes to covering events abroad that aren't connected to US involvement in the Middle East, so it was refreshing to see that Paris received a large percentage of the news hole during the week of 6/3-8/07 as reported in the latest Project for Excellence in Journalism study.
Oh. Scratch that. It was Paris Hilton, not Paris, France which received the media splash.
To be honest, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the heiress's on-and-off-and-on-again incarceration was held to #4/5%. Unlike the Anna Nicole story, Hilton did not get wall-to-wall treatment, although at times it seemed like that was what was happening. The campaign for president was easily the top story of the week, and stories related to President Bush's trip abroad actually did focus much of the coverage overseas. Coverage of the multifaceted Iraq was way down from its normal dominance of the charts, and the usual focus – Iraq policy – was off the top ten and only made the individual cable list. In an unusual development, last week's #1 story, the TB traveler (with an overall 12%), dropped all the way off the top 10 list and remained on only one individual medium list, hanging around on the network TV list for some residual reportage. Also missing from this week's list: a major weather event.
