We Must Resist Urge to Overplay the Smith Story

By James T. Campbell
Houston Chronicle
Published: 2/17/2007

Excerpt:

I confess: I am not Anna Nicole Smith’s baby’s daddy. But many of you have been voyeuristically reading or tuning in to news and entertainment shows trying to find out who is.

But some also want to know: How did she die? What’s going to happen to her baby? And who ultimately will win custody of the child — Smith’s mother or the team of guys claiming to be her father? And, there’s also an unsettled legal fight that could eventually mint the child into a half-billionaire, that some might want to read about. …

… Recently, the Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at the pervasiveness of “tabloid journalism” in the wake of the Smith saga and the story about NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak gone wild, and wrote that the ” … media purported to justify the intensity of the coverage by looking for deeper meaning behind the stories.” …

… Given the snowball the Smith story has become, I asked Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values, does it pass the news value test?