If journalists protest the news, are they still fair and balanced?

No, I did not watch the Paris Hilton interview. Sure, I may have scanned TMZ throughout the week to find out what new major corporation was trying to piggyback off her celebutard status, but I felt by skipping the first-hand news I was delivering a message. Because isn't that what journalists are suppose to do? And of course I don't mean delivering facts to a waiting audience, but of course lording over them with my own moral and ethical dictates about what everyone should be watching.

I don't really want to analyze why I hate the Paris Hilton story because honestly, I think everyone gets it. Everyone knows this isn't really important. Everyone gets the irony. Everyone is watching the story anyway--you better believe that even as I was announcing to my friends how I wouldn't be caught dead watching the interview, I knew I would eventually see the entire thing cut up over YouTube and Best Week Ever--and that brings me to what I will rant about: journalists' protest of the story.

If you haven't seen the Mika Brzezinski meltdown on MSNBC, you're missing a riot. In a three-minute span, she tries to ignore, shred and burn the Paris lead-in, only to have the producers feed in video of Paris' release over her distress. Sure, she was trying to make a point, and yes, it's funny. But really, what right does she have to suddenly decide not to talk about the story? Cable news programing has been going downhill for so long, I'm pretty sure everyone involved might be a few inches away from journalistic-hell. If you choose to cover celebrities, this is what you have to deal with--it's your way of life.

I have more respect for US Weekly's editor, Janice Min, who announced the magazine will not be covering Paris at all. While Mika and Anderson Cooper try to push a journalistic-standards boulder up the cable-new-show mountain, US Weekly's absence of Paris coverage packs a more powerful punch. Unlike MSNBC, CNN, et. al, Min's publication is in the business of celebrity news. People buy her magazine specifically to find out what food Paris ordered in jail or what 'salvation' she received behind bars.

To ban your lead story takes some guts, but don't run out the door to subscribe to the magazine just yet. Min explains her actions at Slate, saying that a big reason for the ban had to do with US Weekly not landing the post-jail interview.

In some ways, the decision to ban Paris was a pragmatic one: Her release occurred too late during our Monday night close for us to offer much reporting on it, and we hadn't landed a post-prison interview. (When Hilton's attorney asked Us to offer a bid to interview the heiress, our request to make it a charitable donation to an organization such as MADD was rejected.) But I also sensed an ever-mounting public frustration—"Please let me off this ride!"—with the Paris story.

I swear, the media economics theory I used to defend my master's project is jumping up and down right now.

So now Mika is a heroine but honestly how much of an effect do you think her actions had on the whole media machine? Probably as little as hundreds of actual journalists protesting an impending buyout by Rupert Murdoch. At least Mika showed up to work.