The View From Here . . .

Last Saturday night, following the Senate vote rejecting debate of the Democrat's Iraq war resolution, I turned on Fox News to get some perspective from the right side of the political spectrum on the latest developments.

I never quite found out if the Iraq coverage was "fair and balanced", as Fox promises. Instead of leading with this story at the top of the hour, or some other development of national or international importance, the lead story focused on recent developments on the many controversies (involving paternity of her child and otherwise) surrounding the death of Anna Nichole Smith, with an on the scene correspondent detailing everything. Ms. Smith had died a number of days before the report, so there was no particularly important breaking news involved, but the report was nevertheless quite lengthy. Truth to tell, I switched channels before the Iraq story appeared, assuming that it ever did.

I don't mean to be particularly harsh on Fox, since most of its competitors in the cable news business had similar saturation coverage of the Smith story. And once this reporting seemed to be playing out, it was replaced in many media outlets by heavy coverage of an even less important story - Britney Spears' wacky decision to shave her head.

Although sensational media coverage is anything but new in America (I am old enough to remember the furor following the death of Marilyn Monroe), it seems to be both increasing in quantity in the expected sources (the Britney hair story was good for three consecutive front pages in the New York Post) and in number of sources willing to engage in this type of journalism , as the Fox News example illustrates.

In some ways, I suppose, the Anna Nichole Smith story had some limited public importance. (The Britney Spears episode, not so much.) It is always sad when someone so young passes away. And, although the exact cause of death is not known, her lifestyle and early demise may be viewed as a cautionary tale. In addition, litigation over her marriage to wealthy octogenarian J. Howard Marshall and the division of Mr. Marshall's estate actually reached the Supreme Court last year.

And it is also true that these are difficult times and that people sometimes prefer to focus on titillating narratives and the foibles of the rich and famous rather than the difficult choices in Iraq or sometimes problems in our own personal life. Indeed, it could also be said that the sports sections of even the most lofty newspapers have long diverted readers, in this case principally male ones, from their cares. In some sense, Britney Spears' latest decision to buy a cheap wig to cover her bald head is no more or less important than the news on the state of the relationship between Yankees Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, also very prominently covered in this week.

Still, it is a little disappointing when supposedly serious outlets use good reporters and substantial resources to cover matters in depth of very marginal importance. People often have very limited amount of time to get the news and wading through relative trivia impedes their ability to grasp what is important. Moreover, there simply have to be better and important matters to be explored by the news organization. It may be tilting against windmills, but I still believe that it would have better for the lead story on Fox last Saturday to have originated from Washington, D.C. rather than Hollywood, Florida.