Live From Simi Valley, It’s ... : Coverage of King Trial, Though Uneven, Is a Public Service

The most striking thing about live television coverage of the Rodney G. King beating trial is that there is live coverage.

Because of its high visibility and the possible implications about police enforcement in general, this is an event that cries out for being made accessible to the public. Fortunately, several Los Angeles stations have heeded the cry.

The Simi Valley trial is available to a relatively narrow audience via the few local cable systems that are picking up either the video feed or full coverage of the Court TV network. However, it’s KTLA Channel 5, KCOP Channel 13 and KTTV Channel 11--the latter with virtual gavel-to-gavel coverage--that deserve high praise for preempting their regular daytime programming last week for live telecasts of the trial’s opening two days.

Actually, there’s no need for more than one live telecast of the volatile trial, in which four Los Angeles Police Dept. officers face charges of using excessive force on King, whose beating during an arrest after a high-speed car chase was captured on that famous videotape by amateur camcorder operator George Holliday.

And one station is now what we’re getting, as KTTV (it’s calling the event “Cops on Trial”) alone remains on the live trial coverage beat this week. Just how long it will do so remains to be seen, as the station says it will be evaluating its trial coverage on a day-to-day basis.

Unlike CNN, which continually pumped commercials into its live coverage of the recent William Kennedy Smith trial, KTTV airs commercials only during infrequent breaks in the King trial. It’s a procedure that is costing the station thousands of dollars a day (it refuses to say exactly how much) in advertising revenue.

That is public service.

Happily, Channel 11’s trial coverage team--anchor Chris Harris, legal analysts Anthony Brooklier, Chris Ayers and Jeff Le Beau, and reporters Dave Bryan and Jane Wells--has been equal to the task. It was Le Beau who Monday raised a significant point: that continued playing of the Holliday tape for the jurors--they saw it on a big screen seven times in the trial’s first three days--could desensitize them to the violence against King.

Elsewhere, local newscast coverage of the trial has been uneven.

* On Monday, for example, KNBC Channel 4’s Phil Shuman correctly noted a seemingly crucial part of the day’s testimony, that California Highway Patrol officer Timothy Singer corroborated testimony by his wife and fellow CHP officer, Melanie Singer, that LAPD officer Laurence M. Powell repeatedly struck King in the head with his baton. Powell’s attorney, Michael Stone, denies that.

Yet Shuman failed Monday to note some of the contradictions in the testimonies of the two Singers, who were on the scene at the King incident. Moreover, Shuman’s characterization of Stone--”He says he knows he’s in trouble”--significantly overstated Stone’s public comments to the media.

* On KCBS-TV Channel 2, Harvey Levin comprehensively summed up Monday’s testimony. As often in the case of Levin, however, the problem was his tone. What he called a day of “high drama” in the courtroom was, as numerous other trial observers noted, in actuality a day of high tedium. And when he reported that Timothy Singer testified that Powell “went on a rampage against King,” those were Levin’s words, not those of the terse-speaking Singer, who did not pass judgment on what he said he saw. On the KCBS 11 p.m. newscast, Levin reported that Timothy Singer had called Powell’s baton blows “unjustifiably brutal.” Again, those were Levin’s words, not Singer’s.

* On KABC-TV Channel 7, John North omitted from his report Timothy Singer’s possibly key testimony corroborating his wife’s testimony that Powell repeatedly slammed King in the head. In addition, North said that the Holliday tape showed King “lunging” toward Powell. That’s what the defense attorneys are claiming. However, Timothy Singer said Monday that King appeared to be “staggering” toward him (Singer) after being shot by a taser gun. This could be a crucial point, for if King were not acting violently, there apparently would be no justification even for the level of force that Powell admits using on him.

* On KCAL-TV Channel 9, David Goldstein reported the Singers’ corroboration about the general location of Powell’s baton blows, as did Bryan Jenkins on Channel 13, Eric Spillman on Channel 5 and Dave Bryan on Channel 11. Bryan also mentioned Timothy Singer’s testimony about King “staggering.”

Meanwhile, some other random observations about the King trial:

* At one point last week, Channel 13 provided a jolting juxtaposition, ending its coverage of the King trial and immediately switching to “People’s Court.” One moment you were watching Judge Stanley Weisberg, the next moment Judge Joseph Wapner--who, if he were presiding over the King trial, would polish it off in about 20 minutes.

* The stupidest media question to date came during one of those televised post-testimony press conferences with the lawyers when an off-camera reporter asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White if it were important for the prosecution to have law enforcement officers--its own witnesses--”testify in detail.” Showing incredible restraint, White did not laugh.

* In a Channel 4 newsbreak during Tuesday’s “Today” program, Shuman, reporting live from Simi Valley, made a reference to “the end of this week.” Anchor Kent Shocknek, his voice full of authority, summed up: “At the end of this week would not be that long from now.”

“As a matter of fact,” Shuman replied with a smirk apparently aimed at Shocknek’s thickness, “it would be three days from now.”

Cops on trial: a primer on courts and media.