According to a study from Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an overwhelming majority of the public (87 percent) says celebrity scandals receive too much news coverage. This criticism generally holds across most major demographic and political groups. Virtually no one thinks there is too little coverage of celebrity scandals.

When asked who is most to blame for the amount of coverage these kinds of stories receive, a majority of the public points to the media. Fully 54 percent of those who say celebrity news is over-covered also believe news organizations are to blame for giving these stories so much coverage. Roughly a third (32 percent) say the public is to blame for paying so much attention to them, and another 12 percent say the media and the public are both equally to blame.

Men and women generally agree on this question, although women tend to follow tabloid stories more closely than do men (52 percent of men and 55 percent of women blame news organizations for all the coverage). Republicans and Democrats also agree on this issue - though Republicans are often more critical of media practices (57 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats blame the media for too much tabloid news).

One noteworthy difference in opinion on the question of who is to blame for tabloid news coverage can be seen across age groups. Young people blame the public more than the news media. Nearly half of those under age 30 say it's the public's appetite for scandal news that spurs the amount of coverage, 31 percent say news organizations are to blame. Among those over age 30, large majorities blame the media, while less than 30 percent blame the public.

Examples cited include Paris Hilton's brief but memorable stint in jail and the death of Anna Nicole Smith. During the two days immediately following Smith's death, nearly a quarter of the news from all sectors (24 percent) was devoted to this story. Public interest did not match the amount of coverage, and 61 percent of Americans said the story was being over-covered.

When asked which types of news organizations give celebrity scandals the most coverage, the public points to television but does not make a clear distinction between cable and network TV. Roughly a third (34 percent) says cable news networks such as CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News channel are the biggest purveyors of celebrity news. Another 27 percent say that the big three network news outlets give these stories the most coverage. Internet news Web sites are cited by 15 percent of the public, 8 percent name newspapers and 4 percent point to radio news programs.

These findings are based on a recent installment of the weekly News Interest Index, an ongoing project of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The index, building on the Center's longstanding research into public attentiveness to major news stories, examines news interest as it relates to the news media's agenda.

The weekly survey is conducted in conjunction with The Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, which monitors the news reported by major newspaper, television, radio and online news outlets on an ongoing basis. In the most recent weeks, data relating to news coverage was collected from July 22-27 and survey data measuring public interest in the top news stories of the week was collected July 27-30 from a nationally representative sample of 1,027 adults.