NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Fed up with hearing about Paris Hilton's jail term or Britney Spears' partying? You are not alone, with nearly nine out of 10 Americans saying celebrity scandals receive too much news coverage.

A survey by the Pew Research Center found 87 percent of 1,027 respondents were fed up with heavy coverage of celebrity scandals, and virtually no one thought there was too little.

Who's to blame? The media, with over half -- 54 percent -- of those who say celebrity news is over-covered also believing news organizations are to blame for giving the stories too many headlines.

About a third -- 32 percent -- say the public is to blame for paying so much attention to them, and another 12 percent said the media and the public are equally to blame.

"Men and women generally agree on this question, although women tend to follow tabloid stories more closely than do men," the Pew researchers said in a statement on Thursday.

The research was conducted after a flurry of news involving Hollywood celebrities this year.

Paris Hilton's brief but memorable stint in jail on a drunken driving related charge became a leading national news story this summer.

The survey found four percent of national news was devoted to this story in the first week of June when she was briefly released from jail then sent back, and 12 percent of the American public said they followed that story more than any other at that time.

Earlier in the year, the death of former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith was an even bigger story with nearly a quarter -- 24 percent -- of the news devoted to this story.

The vast majority of coverage of the two stories, the biggest celebrity scandals of the year, could be seen on cable television news more prominently than in other media.

One of the most recent celebrity scandals, actress Lindsay Lohan's arrest on a second drunken driving charge, generated little interest from the public. Only eight percent followed this story very closely last week.