| This contest is fueled by the following news: |
| | The Associated Press admitted the deliberate Paris Hilton blackout for
a week, not publishing a single story on a scandalous heiress.
The officials from AP said the ban was experimental and only lasted
for a week to see how the public would react to absence of news about
Paris and whether the readers would be more concentrated on really
important news like war in Iraq and steaming presidential election
developments in the Unites States during the Hilton ban week. Paris Hilton is the heiress of the
billion dollar Hilton Hotel empire is most famous for her scandalous sex
tape which turned her from just another boring celebrity to the most
searched and gossiped star in the media in the early 2006.
The AP editors say Hilton blocking experiment had nothing personal
against Paris, but rather it was aimed at seeing if anyone would
notice the absence of news about the celebrity and what manner, if
any, they would react.
The results were quite interesting - many news media publications that
syndicate Associated Press content noticed what was going on, but none
of them requested the news stories covering Paris. Rather they were
extremely interested in the whole ban phenomenon.
This is the first time Associated Press has ever conducted such
news blackout experiment. But it does not mean they will not do it
again. The insider source from AP was quoted saying that they even
received many suggestions from bloggers and news companies suggesting
to do such bans on other topics and people. One of the media bosses
said "Let's do North Korea blackout next and see what happens".
All in all, no real newsworthy events were ignored during the week when Paris
Hilton was blocked from the news articles. During that week, she was caught by the police driving with the
suspended license, and had a birthday party at Beverly Hills restaurant.
Paris Hilton name did appear in related stories about her drinking
buddies Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Nicole Richie.
So as far as the Hilton blackout goes, it was not a "total eclipse of
the heart", rather just a tease of it. |
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For the sake of a media experiment, the Associated Press didn't publish any news about 
