ALL THIS TIME, the nation thought Paris Hilton was paying her debt to society by putting her life on hold while she served her jail term.
But no, it was just business as usual at a new location.
While Hilton was sitting in her cell, her representatives were doing their best to see that she would be paid a very good hourly wage for her jail time. They were hawking the first post-jail interview with Hilton to the highest bidder.
ABC offered $100,000, but was turned down by the Hilton people because NBC had offered much more. How much more was not clear. People magazine was to pay $300,000 for photos from the interview.
Then somebody turned on the light and the cockroaches scurried for cover. All deals were canceled. Hilton’s people made a deal for an interview on “Larry King Live.” Larry King’s representative said King does not pay his interview subjects. It is not clear whether Hilton keeps the rights to any photos of the interview and what deal may have been made for them.
It is not surprising that Hilton was asking big bucks for an interview. She comes from a rich family, but the only thing she has to sell is herself — her image and her presence. Want Paris at a gala party to attract photographers and reporters? Get out the checkbook.
That’s fine. She has a right to set a price for her services.
But news organizations should not pay that price. News must set its own value, based on the perceived importance of an event and public interest in that event. Bringing money into the matter skews that simple equation.
A news organization that pays for a story diminishes the importance of an event by trying to affect the second half of the equation, public interest. The more it pays for a story, the more an organization will promote that story in an attempt to recover its costs by drawing more viewers or readers. Increasing the audience increases the amount the organization can make from advertisers.
In that process, the true importance of the story becomes secondary and real news is shoved aside by created news.
Is the Paris Hilton story important? No. Is the public interested? Yes, but only so far as it confirms their beliefs about the follies of the rich.
This breathless rush for the first interview with a society jailbird is not driven by public demand but by the economics of what has become infotainment.
Hilton may ask her price for being a national object lesson, but there is no reason that anyone but she should pay it.