Enquiring Minds Love ‘Hard Copy’

On the screen, there was mayhem.

It was chaotic. It was loud. It was crazy. It was bombastic. It was mad. It was gross. It was violent. It was stupefying. It was nerve-racking. It was depraved. It was perverted.

Yes, it was “Hard Copy” reporter Doug Bruckner at his thumping, furious best, pulling no punches, letting it all hang out and telling it like it is while going one on one, nose to nose, jaw to jaw in Corcoran State Prison with Charles Manson. It was a close call. But in this duel of doozies. . . .

I was pulling for Manson.

“Hard Copy” does that to you. When watching the most repulsive show on television, you automatically pull for the person it’s exploiting, no matter how heinous that person is. It’s a case of identifying the lesser of evils.

This time, the exploitation was mutual, with Manson performing his wild-man act on cue--he knows what’s expected of him--in exchange for getting this exposure on national TV, just as he previously had done with Geraldo Rivera and others with access to America’s airwaves.

The TV interviewer’s purpose here is theater, to showboat and exhibit snarly toughness in the presence of a maniacal criminal (inside a tightly guarded prison room, that is). You have the feeling that if Dr. Mengele were around, “Hard Copy” would put him on, too.

Paramount’s “Hard Copy” is the closest TV equivalent of those spurious scandal sheets, the National Enquirer and the Star. Airing here weeknights at 7:30 on KNBC Channel 4, “Hard Copy” is by far the foulest of the syndicated tabloid shows, deeper in the gutter even than “A Current Affair” on KTTV Channel 11 and only about knee high to “Inside Edition” on KABC Channel 7.

This is junk, not journalism. A standard “Hard Copy” investigation targets sex or crime or celebrities. Well, muckraking is fine, unless it’s the muck itself doing the raking.

In its 15 months of life, “Hard Copy” has done to the airwaves what that recent oil spill did to the waters and marine life of the Persian Gulf.

Only recently, “Hard Copy” delivered a screeching report on CNN talk show host Larry King’s messy divorce proceedings, using one of its standard techniques in having one of its greasy camera crews ambush King’s wife and her attorney on the street.

Why, the “Hard Copy” reporter demanded to know, had the attorney called King “the Saddam Hussein of broadcasting”? Undaunted by the attorney’s silence on the matter, the reporter persisted anyway, pressing to learn the basis for “this serious charge.”

Somehow, this thin trail of vapor became the basis for a “Hard Copy” story that it brought onto the screen with typical urgency, as if viewers were sitting on the edges of their seats in anticipation.

Some probably were, unfortunately. It’s a depressing thought that there are millions of Americans who actually look forward to watching “Hard Copy” and value it as a source of information. You’ve got to believe, though, that the typical viewer of this show has regular chats with Elvis.

The anchors for “Hard Copy” are Alan Frio and Terry Murphy, a former anchor for KCBS Channel 2 and KABC Channel 7. Just like the show they front, everything Frio and Murphy do is exaggerated and over the top. Murphy, in particular, sounds as if someone is jabbing her with a cattle prod.

“Hard Copy” headlines are frequently misleading, if not outright lies.

For example, here was Murphy announcing Monday’s segment on the infamous 1989 Beverly Hills slaying of Jose and Kitty Menendez, for which their sons, Lyle and Erik, are being tried.

“Menendez Murder Clues!”

“A Video Before Dying!”

“A Father and Son Fist Fight!”

Murphy later poured it on: “Now the tape that may answer the question: Did he (the father) drive them (the sons) to murder?” She added: “New clues to Hollywood’s most notorious murder.”

Oh please.

The supposedly clue-laden tape turned out to be a video of Jose Menendez giving a business seminar that had absolutely no bearing on the case. There were no “new clues” in the segment, only a rehash plus a Miami newspaper reporter saying he was told by “a friend” that Lyle Menendez and his father “might” have had a fistfight over Lyle’s alleged relationship with a lingerie model.

Meanwhile, the story that preceded the Menendez scam on Monday’s “Hard Copy” recalled the murder of a “girlie” photographer, extensively relying on dramatizations. These were unlabeled and intercut with actual people in a way that made the re-creations and reality indistinguishable.

Yet, “Hard Copy” has had even slimier days.

A couple came last month when it delivered a two-parter on the “sex letters” of Jeffrey MacDonald, the former Green Beret doctor serving consecutive life sentences for the murder of his wife and two daughters. Or to recall Murphy’s inflammatory words:

“Killer’s Sex Letters!”

“Mystery Woman Exposed!”

“Jeffrey MacDonald Explodes!”

With typical devious overstatement, “Hard Copy” reporter Diane Dimond went on to promise that the letters were the “first raw glimpse into the mind of one of America’s most notorious convicted killers.” Next time, she should try it with a laugh track.

If MacDonald’s correspondence consisted of “sex” letters, there was no evidence of that on the screen. The “mystery woman” turned out to be a radio talk-show host who denied having a sexual liaison with MacDonald while visiting him in prison. And finally, MacDonald never “exploded” once during his interview with Dimond. Whimpered is more like it.

MacDonald is a truly awful man if guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. Compared with the dirty tricks of “Hard Copy,” however, he seemed almost to be a sympathetic character and just a little bit naive.

“What you’re talking about is silly,” he complained to Dimond. Well, of course it was. Everything “Hard Copy” does is silly.

“This has no meaning,” he complained. Well, of course it didn’t. Nothing that “Hard Copy” does has meaning.

But impact, perhaps.

Against a background of scary music, Dimond warned viewers that MacDonald “still has a network out there working in his behalf.” That this “network” seems to consist primarily of his attorneys trying to obtain his release on legal grounds didn’t seem to matter. Any more than it mattered that Manson’s horror show consisted, in effect, of actors playing their assigned roles.

What did matter was that stories like these feed the fright and paranoia of those Americans who take programs like “Hard Copy” seriously. And that isn’t silly.