Filling Up With Local News We Can’t Use

For several weeks local TV news in Los Angeles was replaced with “What if?” speculations and the head shakings of the talking heads (fill in your anchor favorites). If anything newsworthy was going on in Los Angeles besides the Rodney King civil rights trial, one could not prove it, or find it, on any of our local TV stations.

In the guise of keeping the public “informed,” these celebrities-in-their-own-minds squeezed hundreds of minutes of mindless and detrimental verbiage out of every phase of the trial, bombarding us with speculation.

As the jury deliberated, and there was no news of the trial available , one would have hoped that the news media would have patiently and quietly awaited the verdict. Not so. Instead we were treated to constant interviews with self-serving defense attorneys, the mayor--who dropped into L.A. for the occasion--with Willie Williams and the governor.

We saw police practicing and the obligatory “man-on-the-street” interviews--and preparations at Camp Pendleton and guardsmen aiming rifles.

Just think of all the air time the anchors could have filled with news of “rioters run amok again. News continuously throughout the day even though we have nothing of substance to say.”

JUDITH STEWART CORSE

Los Angeles