Heath Ledger Dies at Age 28: Coverage of Death is Vastly Different Than Coverage of Last Week's Death of Brad Renfro

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment yesterday.

And I couldn't help but notice the difference in coverage between his death and the death of Brad Renfro last week. All of the news networks devoted a great deal of time to Ledger's death--often simultaneously. They've largely ignored the Renfro story.

But both stories pale in comparison to the death one year ago of Anna Nicole Smith and the subsequent legal proceedings pertaining to Smith's baby daughter and the courtroom antics of the crybaby judge.

It's hard to predict how/how much the media's going to cover the loss of celebrities.

Airing of Killer's Rants Leads to Backlash Against Media

The Virginia Tech community reacted with outrage at the airing of a series of disturbing videos, photos and writings of the perpetrator of Monday's massacre on the VT campus. Some families pulled out of appearing on the Today Show to protest the callous airing of the rant.

And ALL the news organizations played parts of the video; shame on ALL of them for giving this killer air time.

I'm in total agreement with Dr. Michael Warner, who said in an interview "...just listen, if you can take Imus off the air, you can certainly keep [Cho] from having his own morning show."

All these analysts should close their mouths and quit trying to analyze this lunatic killer. They're just adding insult to injury when they play back parts of the trash he mailed to the media to help explain why this evil human being did what he did.

This really sucks.