TELEVISION : Chasing Crime and Running From Analysis

One blaze after another, one column of smoke after another, one looting after another, one chaotic incident after another, one television picture after another.

Beirut comes to Los Angeles.

“Behind me is a fire . . . “ Who said that? Not important. Nearly every television reporter has said that in the last two days.

Now that the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King case have been reduced by rioting and violence to an almost blurry memory, television has stopped talking legalese and returned to doing what it always does.

Chase crime.

And there was plenty to chase Thursday.

So much, in fact, that NBC considered announcing the postponement of its widely publicized Thursday night final episode of “The Cosby Show,” an epic comedy series about an African-American family whose upper-middle-class environment is a stratosphere away from the besieged residents of many parts of Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, a more excited voice: “That’s my arm. We’re behind the police car, seeking safety.” That was KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Harvey Levin narrating chaotic videotape of him and his crew in jeopardy after shots were heard when Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies began taking suspected looters into custody in South Los Angeles. Earlier, there were live pictures of Levin coughing and sputtering after inhaling fumes from a fire.

On KABC-TV Channel 7, looters were shown emptying a shoe store, a few of them stopping to smile and wave at the camera. “Some people even took time to find out if they had the right size,” a reporter said.

In another neighborhood, youthful looters brazenly explained their strategy for resuming their pillaging of a food market after being interrupted by police. When the officers leave, one youth told Channel 2 reporter Mike O’Connor, “everybody go back in.”

On KNBC Channel 4, four young boys were shown walking away from a store with merchandise. Why? they were asked. “Because everybody’s doin’ it,” the oldest one replied.

On another channel, a plume of black smoke was expanding across the horizon. And on another, a line of helmeted police officers was moving forward against an unseen foe, batons at the ready.

When there was a rare crime lull Thursday, stations could always rerun videotape of Wednesday’s crimes. “This is the part that’s hard to believe,” Channel 4 anchor Colleen Williams said about a motorist being dragged from his truck and savagely beaten and kicked.

The coverage of this difficult, demanding story is sometimes hard to believe. As the images merge like runny watercolors, watching becomes numbing.

Television is surest and best when pursuing hot spot after hot spot. It’s the caboose on a freight train of action and violence, doomed by its own devices never to catch up or be able to see beyond the the next incident. When it comes to putting things in context, it’s a dismal failure.

Thus, the present story. The crimes are real. The casualties are real. The damage is real. In addition to the knee-jerk live reporting, however, some intelligent reflection would be helpful.

We are getting editorializing from reporters and especially anchors. Shedding their journalist skins, these self-appointed spokesmen have injected themselves into their stories by freely and fearlessly dispensing advice to police and members of the city Administration.

But other times--when occasionally trying to dig deeper than the composite headline of the individual spot news stories--they fumble badly, inevitably being diverted by the next siren.

Why is this nightmare occurring? Why, with apparent sincerity, do looters continue to justify their actions to reporters in the field by saying “everyone is doin’ it?”

For a few minutes Thursday night, actor Edward James Olmos was able to give the present crisis some historical perspective in a discussion with Channel 2 anchors Michael Tuck and Bree Walker.

But that tiny segment of illumination was cut short when the next hot spot beckoned and Channel 2 cut to yet another fire. Soon after that, its chopper began pursuing a car said to be carrying a suspected arsonist.

In California’s Beirut, there’s plenty of time for chasing, little for thinking.

“Lotta guns drawn.”