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I'm sure everyone has already seen this, but just in case you haven't: Journalists and journalism scholars alike often talk about news values: the characteristics an event should have in order to become news. One of the most famous studies of news values was done by Norwegian scholars Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge in 1965 - neatly summarized on Wikipedia, here. Let's see how the "Paris Hilton released from prison" story fit with these news values: Impact values: Threshold: The story really only affects one person and perhaps her immediate family and circle of friends, so it rates quite low on threshold value. Frequency: It is a well-defined event that fits with the news organisation's schedule, and it does no occur gradually: a person is either released from prison, or not. Negativity: This news item is hardly negative. Unexpectedness: It's not an unexpected event at all - the date of Paris Hilton's release has presumably been known since her sentencing. Unambiguity: Again, the event is very well-defined and unambiguous and therefore ranks high in this category. The meaning of the event ("Famous person gets released from prison) could hardly be misunderstood. Audience identification values: Personification: This is clearly a "human interest"-story with focus on the individual (It's not about the state of US prisons in general or sentencing practices, for example). Meaningfulness: The event ranks quite highly in this category, I would say - mostly because it takes place within the context of a "culture of celebrity" that is global rather than just limited to the US. Reference to elite nations: The story clearly has this, albeit indirectly: of course the story wouldn't have had recieved so much global coverage if the celebrity in question had been Chinese, Norwegian or Chilean. It is significant that Paris Hilton is American. Reference to elite persons: Well, yes, definitely. What exactly makes Paris Hilton an "elite person" could be the subject of a whole separate blog entry so I'll just ignore that for now. Pragmatic values (i.e. values that have more to do with the practical considerations of the news organisations than any intrinsic value of the event covered): Consonance: The story scores big here: it fits very well with the stories that have previously been told about Paris Hilton. Consonance is often much more important than unexpectedness - most news items (such as this one) are not really "new" at all, but fit well with previously-told stories. Continuity: See above. Another big score: the Paris Hilton-released-from-prison-story just follows as part of a continuous narrative where previous stories have dealt with her crime, the trial etc. From this point of view, it would indeed be rather suprising if the news did not cover her release from prison, as that item makes for a "natural" end to the ongoing narrative. Composition: Hard to tell. The story was of course reported alongside different news stories in different countries. Like many celebrity-oriented news stories, the Paris Hilton story above all scores highly in the consonance and continuity categories, closely followed by personification/reference to elite persons and meaningfulness/cultural proximity. Mika Brzezinski seems to be upset mostly because the news item does not follow the news values traditionally associated with "importance" (i.e. threshold and unexpectedness) - but "importance" is in fact rarely as important a news value as the ability to fit the story within previously-existing media narratives and to individualize the event. The Paris Hilton story is really just a somewhat more extreme example of what goes on in journalism all the time.