http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...dia/print.html

Extract

What is telling about the excessive coverage is how right-wing
activists, with heavy-hitter help from Washington, were able to lead the
press around, as if on a leash, for nearly two weeks as they pumped up
what had been a long-simmering (seven years) family legal dispute and
turned it into the most-covered story since a tsunami in Asia three
months ago left approximately 300,000 people dead or missing. In the
past two weeks the cable outlets and networks have mentioned "Schiavo"
more than 15,000 times. By comparison, during the two weeks following
the Asian humanitarian crisis, those same outlets mentioned "tsunami"
approximately 9,000 times, according to TVEyes, the digital monitoring
service. (As for television's long-forgotten Iraq war, it garnered just
2,900 TV mentions over the two weeks that Schiavo mania ran rampant.)


It's true that press outlets were very slow to pick up on the Sunday
Charlotte Observer's story

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1000856102

that Scott Heldreth, a religious activist and antiabortion crusader
who helped stage the children's arrest outside Schiavo's hospice, is a
registered sex offender in Florida. "The former Naperville, Fla.,
resident remains listed on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's
sex offender registry," the Observer reported.