And the wall came tumbling down...

I think we need to send a copy of The Elements of Journalism to NBC.

The headline for a June 22nd article in the Los Angeles Times proclaimed:

“Paying $1 million for Hilton interviews alarms journalist ethicists, ranklesNBC employees”

Evidently NBC’s entertainment division has been bidding for an interview with Paris “effectively circumventing the news division's policy prohibiting payments for interviews.”

According to the article:
"It seems like there are end-runs all over the place, and they are being done in the name of competition," said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast ethics at the Poynter Institute, a media resource and school in Florida. "I don't know what transpired here, but what I do know is that any compensation that comes through a network — whether it's a book deal or movie deal or offering special access — none of that has any place in news.”

Although The Today Show host Matt recently indicated his disdain for the intense media coverage of Paris in an interview with Larry King, his co-host, Meredith Vieira, is the journalist supposedly slated to do the coveted interview.

During a time of layoffs and cost-cutting measures, a bidding war for the Paris interview is sitting very well with “demoralized” NBC news division employees.

And as journalism becomes more subjugated to entertainment and the news to corporate profits, we get more cotton candy for our brains.