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Yesterday, ABC and CBS relented in the face of tabloid excess and assigned Pierre Thomas and Bill Whitaker to the wretched Paris Hilton saga. Now, as Hilton's one day of house arrest ended and she returned to the county jail from which she had been prematurely released, ABC managed to hold the high ground and mention her only in passing whereas NBC's George Lewis and CBS' unlucky-again Whitaker drew the short straws. "For party girl Paris Hilton the party is over for a while," Whitaker narrated. She was taken from the courtroom "sobbing and wailing." He described the "usually picture perfect Paris" as "disheveled and distraught before the judge."
NBC's Lewis resorted to that time honored technique when assigned to a story that is really not worth covering--turn the storyline into the news media's decision to devote too much coverage to it. Lewis showed the paparazzi chase the sheriff's cruiser; he showed excerpts from the cable news channels' "breathless non-stop coverage;" and he showed clips from TV newscasts worldwide, predictably, "even in Paris."
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