Channel 2’s Carjacker: A B-Movie Plot

It’s ugly, it’s shocking, it’s terrifying, it’s utterly criminal and all right-thinking citizens are praying that it will end.

Nevertheless, Los Angeles television’s epidemic of newsjacking continues.

The latest sickening episode occurred on the 5 p.m. edition of KCBS-TV Channel 2’s “Action News” last Wednesday. The catalyst was the city’s headline-making rash of lethal carjackings, of which there had been two that morning.

On the screen, being interviewed by new-to-KCBS, new-to-L.A. reporter Stephanie Frederic, was someone she identified only as B-Dog, an 18-year-old ex-con brashly boasting of being a carjacker.

At the bottom of the screen was a Channel 2 graphic boasting: “Only on Action News.”

Frederic reported from Koreatown that B-Dog had admitted murdering for a car. His face masked by a red bandanna and his eyes covered by dark sunglasses, B-Dog told Frederic that he felt no compassion for innocent victims of carjacking violence: “You run into somebody like me, and you don’t get outta your car, and you’re bound to die.”

Frederic and the masked B-Dog strolled through a public park where youngsters could be observed lolling on a playground in the distance. Frederic and the still-masked B-Dog next cruised Crenshaw Boulevard in an unmarked Channel 2 news van from which the “coldblooded carjacker” pointed out cars he fancied.

With the masked B-Dog sitting on the passenger side with his arm partially out his open window, the van pulled alongside an old-model car stopped for a light at a busy intersection. Starring down at the female driver, B-Dog told Frederic that this car “should be got,” and he spoke admiringly of its motor.

A masked man sitting in an unmarked van stopped at an intersection next to another car? The scene was almost surreal.

“She’s hip to it,” B-Dog said as the female motorist abruptly pulled away and made a sharp right turn. “The woman was so frightened, she turned from the middle lane of this busy intersection,” Frederic added in a voice-over.

Later, B-Dog displayed his “sidekick,” a semi-automatic weapon, which he then proceeded to use in a demonstration of his own violent carjacking technique, rushing up to a van and thrusting the weapon through the open window at the occupants. Although it looked staged, viewers had to draw their own conclusions.

Whoever he really is, B-Dog got his two minutes and 25 seconds of fame. But it’s “Action News” that belongs in a “B” movie.

First, how could Frederic know if this guy was really a carjacker? She pulls into a crummy neighborhood, asks for a volunteer carjacker, someone raises his hand and off they go?

Second, even if he was genuine, what justification was there for a reporter taking a walk and riding in an unmarked van with someone wearing a mask? No wonder the woman in the car coveted by B-Dog panicked and sped off. But what if she had crashed, injuring or killing herself and others? What if she had produced a gun in self defense and there had been a shootout? In fact, the what-if possibilities for disaster were almost endless.

Third, it’s one thing to protect the identity of a purported felon in the interest of a story whose message produces some greater good for society, but quite another when the purpose appears to be only sensationalism.

*

The purpose of this story, viewers initially were told, was to teach L.A. about carjackers’ “motives.” And yes, you can imagine how stunned the city was to learn that B-Dog’s motive was profit, that he wasn’t carjacking from the rich to help the poor.

Another message from this trashy, irresponsible story was that if you’re approached by a masked man in an unmarked van, well, be suspicious. Especially if the van is owned by Channel 2.

Channel 2 news director John Lippman was unavailable for comment. But the carjacker story was defended by Steven J. Gigliotti, the station’s vice president and general manager.

Gigliotti said he was confident B-Dog was an actual carjacker because Frederic’s sources “corroborated the fact that he was.” He denied that the story was irresponsible, saying there was no “intention to frighten” the woman motorist.

“The intention was to show our viewers how ruthless these criminals are,” he said. “I’m a person who lives here. I drive a BMW. I learned from that piece that it doesn’t really matter whether you drive a luxury car. You’re targeted because you’re in the right position at the right time.”

Gigliotti also asserted that there was “no staging involved whatsoever.” Then he backtracked, admitting it was Channel 2’s own van that B-Dog rushed with his weapon. “That’s obvious,” Gigliotti said. “It would have been (made) more obvious by the word dramatization , which should have been on the piece.”

Asked about her story by phone last Friday morning, reporter Frederic replied, “Oh, boy, I knew this was coming.” She added that she could not comment without first getting approval from Channel 2, but that if she were forbidden to speak, she’d get someone else “to tell my side. I don’t know what you’ve been told,” she said, “but someone needs to know what happened on this deal.”

She never called back.

Only on “Action News.”

*

B-BULL: It’s a bad rule. Yet the longstanding federal ban on televising or broadcasting proceedings inside federal courtrooms did not exclude the recent civil rights trial of police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

Thus, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies briefly withdrew Channel 2 reporter Bob Jiminez’s credentials earlier this month after the judge’s voice could be heard during one of Jimenez’s live updates from the pressroom inside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building.

Davies changed his mind only after Jimenez and CBS lawyers persuaded him that the judge’s voice--coming through squawk boxes piping sound from the trial into the pressroom--had been broadcast by Channel 2 inadvertently.

On April 17, however, Channel 2 again broadcast audio from the courtroom, this time airing the clerk’s reading of the verdicts and once again violating the federal rule.

Another “accident” or premeditation? Judge for yourself.

At issue is an excerpt from Channel 2 news director Lippman’s April 6 memo to his staff stating plans for coverage of the verdicts. One of the last items in the memo refers to getting the verdicts “on the air first,” including reading them word for word--as Jimenez and reporters from other stations did--”or holding phone up to speaker or patching it down the phone line for air.” It appeared that Channel 2 did that too.

In other words, is it possible that Lippman’s memo, in effect, ordered his staff to violate a federal rule and that the order was carried out?

“What you have is misinformation,” said station chief Gigliotti.

*

He said that the April 6 document “was never intended to be released as a memo,” that it was a “compilation of notes from a group meeting that was accidentally released in a miscommunication from his (Lippman’s) assistant.”

Gigliotti said the April 6 document was released while he and Lippman were out of town and that it was superseded by an April 13 “corrected” memo, a copy of which he supplied. It makes no reference to holding a phone to a speaker.

However, even according to Gigliotti’s account, the “misinformation” was in circulation a full week--long enough, apparently, for it to sink in, with transmission of the clerk’s voice clearly reading the verdicts on April 17 being the result.

But Gigliotti said that conclusion, too, was off base. He maintained that other stations also aired background “murmur” from the courtroom on April 17 and that, once again, Channel 2’s broadcasting of courtroom audio was “unintentional.”

Judge Davies could not be reached for comment. After speaking to him about this matter, however, a law clerk in his office reported back that Davies had seen neither Lippman’s April 6 “memo” nor Channel 2’s telecast of the verdicts and was planning no investigation “unless someone raises the issue.”

So much for deterrence.