TV news shows fueled frenzied Anna Nicole coverage

MIAMI – Network morning shows and cable news fueled the frenzied coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death and the saga that followed leading to her burial, a report from a media watchdog group found.\nThe Project for Excellence in Journalism study found that in the roughly three weeks between Smith’s death and burial, the story came up just shy of being the most-covered news of the period among all media reporting.\nOnly the Iraq war and 2008 election drew more focus.\nThe study found, however, that the Smith story was pushed mostly by relatively few outlets.\n“The Anna Nicole Smith story, all told, was a serious preoccupation of the news media,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the journalism project. “But if you look inside this frenzy, you find that most media outlets and most media sectors after the first two days just treated this story at arm’s length.”\nAcross all media, the study found 30 percent of news coverage was devoted to Smith in the first two days of the story. Cable news gave 55 percent of its airtime to the story in its first hours.\nThe study found that while most sectors of the media eased off after the first two days, the network morning shows and, particularly, cable news shows continued to give the story heavy airtime.\n“When cable really finds a megastory to dwell on,” Jurkowitz said, “they can really set the water-cooler agenda for what people end up talking about.”\nCable news programs devoted 22 percent of their airtime to the Smith story from Feb. 8 to March 2, double the amount given the second-biggest story, the presidential campaign, the study found.\nFox News Channel devoted 32 percent of its total airtime to the story, MSNBC gave 21 percent and CNN allotted 14 percent.\nThe percentages would have been higher, the study acknowledged, if two of the personalities who covered the story most extensively – CNN’s Larry King and Fox’s Greta Van Susteren – were included in its index of media outlets. “Larry King Live” included the story in 16 of the 21 shows in the survey period; “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” devoted part of 16 out of its 17 shows to Smith-related coverage.\nIn a statement, Fox defended its coverage, saying, “We’ve invested in covering the Anna Nicole story as much as every other media outlet, including The Associated Press.”\nCNN and MSNBC declined to comment.\nThe study found the network morning news shows gave 15 percent of their first half-hour of programming to the Smith story, compared to 2 percent of their evening counterparts.\nTaking all media outlets into consideration, the Smith story’s 8 percent of total coverage was just short of the 9 percent devoted to the war and 2008 election, and well ahead of the time and space given to such stories as the February stock market plunge, the Scooter Libby trial and the nuclear deal with North Korea.\nView the entire report online at www.journalism.org/node/4872.