Mild-Mannered Reporters Needn’t Apply in King Case : Media: Covering trial means waiting anxiously, elbowing for space and chasing defendants to bathroom.

Ruth White, 77, laced up her red sneakers Thursday morning and got on a downtown-bound bus to spend the day at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building where the Rodney G. King civil rights trial, one of the most closely watched proceedings in U.S. history, is being held.

It was not the celebrated trial White came to see, it was the news media dispatched there to cover the celebrated trial.

“Look, there’s Phil Shuman!” she announced happily, as though she had just sighted Elvis rather than a KNBC-TV reporter.

It’s better than the afternoon soaps. It’s the wackiest circus in town. Press organizations from 15 countries, including Estonia, have descended upon Los Angeles, sprawling out in lawn chairs in the federal building’s outdoor plaza, chasing defendants on the way to the bathroom, bolting into action if one of the deliberating jurors so much as asks for a Coke.

“Piranhas in a feeding frenzy,” a federal security officer grumped as reporters chased each other around Thursday trying to determine who violated a court order and broadcast the judge’s voice on live TV, causing him to threaten to “disassemble the pressroom and shut it down.”

Critics keep accusing the media of fanning the flames of panic in a city on the edge of its seat. In fact, a recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that the public, for the most part, believes that the media are acting responsibly.

But that has done little to counter the building tension as the jury nears the end of its first full week of deliberations and news organizations from around the world brace in anticipation of a repeat of the civil unrest that followed last year’s not guilty verdicts in the state trial of four Los Angeles police officers who beat King.

“It’s like a big cocktail party and anxiety is the intoxicant,” Daily Journal reporter Susan Seager said, a bottle of generic aspirin on her cramped desk.

Such hip hotels as the Mondrian in West Hollywood have risen to the occasion, offering discount press rates, complimentary breakfast included. A press release sent over national news wires by the Mondrian said that for reporters who need to “file stories in the middle of the night,” a business studio is open around the clock, complete with state-of-the-art Macintosh computer equipment.

It seems every reporter in the city is on a beeper. Some have been issued “protective gear” in the event of unrest. They are like a bunch of expectant fathers waiting for the city to go into labor. We can all be thankful they are not carrying guns. This is one jumpy group.

When two CNN reporters bolted out of the oppressively cramped pressroom the other day, a contingent of nervous reporters ran after them, afraid of being scooped.

Life in such close and chaotic quarters has spawned some rules of group survival. Rule No. 1: No joking about verdicts being reached when verdicts have not been reached.

Adding to the stress, the judge has not instituted any formal method of notifying the press when jurors communicate with him. So reporters, who would sooner share a disease with a competitor than a piece of information, have instituted a regimen to make sure no news is missed; they take turns standing half-hour watches at the seventh-floor offices of the defendants and lawyers, just in case they should be called to court.

Then there was Wednesday’s episode. A cryptic announcement came from U.S. District Judge John G. Davies--”proceedings” at 1 p.m. The media promptly went into a tizzy. Was it verdicts? Dozens of Los Angeles Times reporters got beeped. Several dispatched themselves to pre-assigned outposts around the city. Television helicopters took to the sky. Cameras were snapped off their tripods. The humidity level in the crowded pressroom seemed to rise 10% from all the sweating.

When Davies finally explained himself nearly two hours later--a juror felt sick and had to go to the doctor--it was as though the entire pressroom had unbuttoned a tight pair of pants:

“I feel like I’m in a MASH unit.”

“I think I just had a heart attack.”

“I’m leaving.”

This is a world where everything happens even when nothing happens. News bulletins as momentous as this go out almost hourly: “The jury has finished lunch.”

The search for information is frenetic. One false move can alarm a whole city. One lapse of attention can mean missing the conclusion of a case they have stalked for two months.

Bill Licatovich, public affairs officer for the U.S. Marshals Service, is besieged. Every time he stands still, a news conference happens. His day is filled with conversations such as this one, which came after Davies scheduled his mysterious hearing:

“Do you know what it is?” a reporter asked.

“I don’t know what it is, but I am almost positive it is not a verdict,” Licatovich said politely.

“What factors lead you to be absolutely positive it is not a verdict?”

“Well, I wasn’t called to the courtroom and I think I would have been.”

“Does the jury have a question, then?”

“No, I don’t know if it’s a question.”

“Are you saying you don’t know what it is?”

“Yes, I think that’s what I’m saying.”

While most of the reporters camp out in the makeshift pressroom, the cameras and other electronic equipment remain banished to the courtyard outside the building. The trial is on the eighth floor. Reporters line up like cattle waiting for a seat whenever the judge beckons. At the end of the day they have to report something, whether or not there is anything to report.

The suspense is killing everyone. This was apparent Thursday morning when the press corps filed in to its quarters and was met by a one-paragraph missive from Judge Davies. His voice had been broadcast over a television station while he was on the bench. And he was plenty mad.

Journalists started snooping around to find the culprit. A rumor erupted that it was KCBS-TV reporter Bob Jimenez. Pretty soon the federal marshals came in and yanked his credentials. The judge was threatening to shut down the pressroom, which is equipped with speaker boxes that allow reporters to hear what goes on in the courtroom when they cannot get a coveted seat to watch firsthand. Shutting down the pressroom would cut off access for most of them, making a difficult job even harder.

Everybody got on phone to the editors. The editors got on the phone to the lawyers.

A mob gathered around Jimenez in the pressroom, where reporters were climbing over each other, untangling themselves from phone cords and tripping over electrical wires. They looked like they were going to lynch him. No, wait. They were defending him.

“You can’t yank his credentials without a hearing! What about due process?” a woman from another television station boomed, demanding that the federal marshals get in there and explain themselves.

Jimenez stepped forward boldly. It was a “technical accident,” what he called “ambient noise” inadvertently broadcast through his earpiece while he was standing next to a squawk box broadcasting live from his desk.

Most people felt sorry for him, but not everybody. “Any idiot would know if you are broadcasting on the phone with a squawk box blaring it’s going to be picked up,” one reporter grumbled.

Jimenez demanded to talk to the judge. Sketch artists who have not had much to sketch since the jury retired started sketching Jimenez. The ones who came to cover the news had suddenly become it. Jimenez called his lawyer. Reporters gathered around to listen. “. . . blah blah blah . . . ambient noise . . . blah blah blah.”

CBS producer Michael Singer started yelling about a violation of the 1st Amendment. Then he got on the phone to the lawyers. Then he demanded to see the judge.

“It’s like a scene from ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ The Munchkins are demanding to see the wizard,” Copley News Service reporter Norma Meyer noted.

It all worked out in the end. The judge acknowledged that it was all an accident and gave Jimenez his press credentials back. The pressroom remained open.

Half a day wasted. Big sigh of relief. Still no verdicts, but something to write about.

And the wait goes on. Sometimes it seems toughest on reporters visiting from places as far away as Holland, Italy, Germany and Japan. At least the local crews can go home at night.

Los Angeles is a strange place to the out-of-town journalists given a couple of weeks to figure it out. Just the same, circumstances have transformed them into instant barometers of Los Angeles’s sociological climate. It is a role many find unsettling.

Dan Caplis, a Denver-based attorney and legal reporter for NBC affiliates in high-profile court cases, snapped when a local radio talk show host asked him whether riots would follow the verdicts.

“I’m just a white boy from Denver,” Caplis barked. “I am not qualified to speak on that. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the community. I’m here as a legal expert, not a sociologist.”

To get a better fix on the city, many of the out-of-towners are cruising riot flash points such as Florence and Normandie avenues and driving to the spot in Lake View Terrace where King was beaten by the officers.

Regis Navarre, a political reporter for Le Monde in Paris, said his editors were eager to send him to Los Angeles. The King trial and the potential for violence in the city have been the talk of cafes and bookstores for the past year, particularly in the suburbs where many of the country’s minorities live.

“Los Angeles is like a laboratory,” said Navarre, 30, who also covered the end of the Simi Valley trial of the officers last year. “We want to see how they handle a trial in police brutality, to see if we could handle a trial on the same thing.”

If the anxiety of the impending verdicts is not enough to give journalists ulcers, there lurking in the back of their minds is the fear for personal safety should violence erupt. Their calling is to do objective, non-inflammatory reporting. But they cannot help but remember that the last time around, several reporters were pelted with debris and shot at.

Kristin Jeannette-Meyers, a New York lawyer-journalist with cable station Court TV, said she could feel the tension when she stopped at a downtown automated teller machine to withdraw cash. Two middle-aged men came toward her and she jumped. When they saw how startled she was, they burst into laughter.

“Hey, Fred, I think she’s afraid we’re going to rob her,” one of them said.

“I was so mortified,” she said later, embarrassed by her jumpiness.

Thursday afternoon passed without chaos as the jurors wrapped up Day No. 6 of deliberations. Ruth White’s red sneakers were moving all over the courtyard in search of a glimpse of Paul Dandridge. Yesterday, she and her friend, Helen Jensen, 78, got on an RTD bus and toured South-Central, including the infamous corner of Florence and Normandie. It was better than a tour of the movie stars’ homes.

White stood dwarfed by the battalion of cameras ready to roll should anything happen, the KABC ribbon she mailed away for fastened to her lapel. There was something fascinating about spending the day surrounded by all these reporters.

There was just one drawback.

“Standing around here,” she said, “we don’t hear any news.”