El D,
If coverage of this type of incident bothers you because of its lack of merit I am guessing the Paris Hilton coverage induced a seizure?
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Chomsky and Herman is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the driving forces of the media machine. It addresses several historical examples of how the "liberal media" can so uniformly ignore or downplay very newsworthy events that are often very relevant to the American people.
Summary