Reporter's Early Exclusives Triggered a Media Frenzy

Satz's first McMartin broadcast aired on KABC Channel 7 on Feb. 2, 1984--the beginning of "sweeps" month, when local television stations traditionally broadcast their most attention-getting programming in hopes of attracting the high ratings on which local advertising rates are based.

Satz denies that the sweeps were a factor in the timing of his early stories, and he is equally insistent that other, even harsher criticisms of his McMartin coverage are also unjustified. But Satz was unquestionably the most important and most controversial media figure in the early stages of the case and now, six years later, with the verdicts finally in, his role is worth examining in some detail.

Satz, who left KABC in mid-1987, is not just the reporter who broke the story; he is also the only reporter to be sued by former McMartin defendants and he is the reporter who, while covering the story, became romantically linked to the social worker at Children's Institute International whose interviews with McMartin children became the controversial early crux of the prosecution's case.

More important, it was Satz's early coverage that triggered a feeding frenzy in the media, both locally and nationally.

Los Angeles television reporters in particular were immediately under pressure from their superiors to match--or surpass--the exclusive McMartin stories Satz was broadcasting night after night.

"There was hysteria in the newsroom," says Ross Becker of KCBS. "I remember the news director . . . sitting there watching . . . Satz and coming to me and saying, 'Ross, we got killed again.'

"The story took on a life of its own," Becker says. "We didn't even think at the time . . . about what we were doing. . . . It was 'We gotta get s omething new on McMartin; look how big this thing is getting. . . .' "

Unlike many other local reporters interviewed for this story, Satz makes no apologies for his coverage. Most of the others say they are embarrassed by, even ashamed of, their lack of early skepticism and their initial eagerness to believe even the most unlikely prosecution allegations in the case.

Not Satz. His coverage, he says, was "fair-minded," not "unquestioning or uncritical at any point."

"There's almost nothing (in my coverage) I would change," he says.

But a review of that coverage over two years' time (reports dotted with words like "grotesque," "nightmarish," "chilling," "horrific," "bizarre," "amazing," "depravity," and "mind-blowing") and interviews with others involved in the case (participants and other journalists alike) leaves little doubt that Satz's early stories were largely instrumental in establishing the hysterical tone in both the media and the general public that is now loudly decried on all sides.

Even prosecutors and some parents and children in the case agree that Satz's coverage was both sensationalized and, at least implicitly, pro-prosecution.

"Channel 7 coverage was outrageous. . . . Wayne was so pro-prosecution," says Christine Johnston, a prosecutor who withdrew from the case when she developed doubts about the guilt of the defendants.

Johnston says she was especially offended when Satz telephoned her at home on the day The Times published a story quoting another, unnamed prosecutor as expressing similar doubts. She says Satz wrongly accused her of having been the prosecutor in question; as subsequent events made clear, it was actually Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens. The implication of Satz's alleged call, she says, was that she had damaged the prosecution's case and he was angry about it.

'Nasty Tone of Voice'

"The tone of voice he used . . . was a really nasty tone of voice," Johnston says.

Satz will neither confirm nor deny having called Johnston at home, but he insists that he never said anything to her that could be construed as his being angry that she had damaged the prosecution's case.

Some McMartin parents say Satz did make clear to them, though, that he genuinely believed their children and supported their cause.