News Anchor Refuses to Report on Paris Hilton Release  6/30/07

A U.S. news anchor repeatedly refused to report on Paris Hilton's release from jail earlier this week and attempted to set fire to the script live on air to make her point.

Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe on network MSNBC, objected to leading her bulletin on Tuesday (26Jun07) with the news of Hilton's freedom over stories about the War in Iraq and the White House.

Brzezinski - whose father Zbigniew was a national security adviser to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s - told her producers, "I hate this story and I don't think it should be our lead", before scrunching up the script.

She was given a new version of the news bulletin but still didn't agree with the ordering of the items and tried to burn the script with a cigarette lighter. A third script was also destroyed, after the 40-year-old presenter put it in the newsroom's paper shredder.

She then said, "My producer Andy Jones isn't listening to me. I'm about to snap. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing the story."

Hilton served 23 days of a 45-day sentence in a Los Angeles jail after being found guilty of violating her probation from a drink-driving arrest last year (06).