Glare of the Fires Blocks Out World

It was the firestorm that destroyed the world.

At least you got that impression from television coverage of this week’s calamitous fires that charred Malibu and blew through the Beaumont-Banning area. In mobilizing for their marathon live coverage, stations that covered the fires ignored what was happening elsewhere Tuesday and much of Wednesday.

The rest of the world ceased to exist.

What happened was an example of TV news at its showiest--shedding commercials to relentlessly cover an epic disaster and relay crucial information to the public--and at its most myopic. Although catastrophic in their own right, the prior week’s Laguna Beach and Altadena blazes were foreplay for the even greater challenges that were to face TV news operations this week. And again, for the most part, TV came through spectacularly. But. . . .

Whatever happened to Haiti? To Somalia? To Bosnia? To Russia? To the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks? To the battle over the diaries of Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.)? To the debate over President Clinton’s controversial health care plan?

You might have learned the answers from Tuesday’s network newscasts, except that they were preempted for fire coverage. And local stations didn’t fill the void.

Still closer to home, you would not have known from watching local news stations Tuesday night that Californians had gone to the polls that day to vote on a crucial school voucher initiative and other important measures. You would not have known about important local elections, or elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia whose outcomes were said to have inflicted possible damage to the Clinton Administration.

Nor would you have known from watching TV that evening that Henry Keith Watson had pleaded guilty in the morning to an unresolved felony assault charge in the Reginald O. Denny beating case--last month’s media obsession--or that Damian Monroe Williams had lost his bid for lower bail.

Even though their reporting of the Malibu firestorm had become repetitive and the justification for their live, nonstop coverage had disappeared by 8 p.m. (if not earlier) Tuesday, the area’s seven major commercial stations stayed on their subject like lasers.

They could have enlightened their viewers by putting together mini-newscasts, then returning to live coverage. They could have run printed crawls reporting election returns and other items. But they didn’t.

Ditto for Wednesday, all the way to early evening. (If they did stray from their fire coverage for other news, it was done so tersely that I and viewers who phoned The Times to complain didn’t notice.)

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Take the news presented by the three major network-owned stations on Wednesday, for example. Even though the Malibu-area blaze had diminished to the point that it could have been adequately covered by news updates, KCBS-TV Channel 2 went exclusively with that story until “The CBS Evening News” at 6:30 p.m. KABC-TV Channel 7’s news also stayed on the fire, preempting ABC’s “World News Tonight.” At 6:50 p.m., Channel 7 briefly reported state and national election results, sneaking them in like a cat burglar.

KNBC-TV Channel 4 carried NBC’s “Nightly News” at 6:30. Before that, its news coverage was all fire, except for a brief sportscast, a fleeting update on the Menendez trial and the first of three parts on “Mexican Mafia,” a Joe Rico mini-doc specifically designed for the November ratings sweeps. Strewn with bloodied corpses--just what you wanted to see after watching much of Malibu reduced to embers--Part 1 ran three-plus minutes.

And speaking of embers, is there a correlation between tragedy and property values? It was easy to infer that at times from this week’s reporting. You can’t even begin to count the number of times the word exclusive has been used by seemingly money-and-status-awed reporters and anchors to describe burning Malibu homes--as if the bigger the price, the bigger the sorrow.

And here was KCAL-TV Channel 9’s Gay Yee in upscale Calabasas: “These are very expensive houses. And officials tell me each lot is worth several million dollars. So a lot out here is at stake.”

More at stake than when lower-priced property burns, turning the less affluent into homeless?

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Yee was hardly the only offender. “Expensive homes and a country club are threatened,” KCOP-TV Channel 13 anchor Wendy Walsh announced this week about a fire in north San Diego County. Presumably reading copy written by others, she went on to tick off the estimated values of those homes. Reading a story concerning the same fire, moreover, Channel 9’s Jane Velez said the fires were “racing through some of the choicest real estate . . . in the world.”

The message, intended or not, was that people whose shacks burn suffer less.

Meanwhile, television can always be counted on to be television. Thus typically, stations this week gave movie-style disaster titles to their fire coverage, a la Channel 2’s flaming “FIRESTORMS,” Channel 4’s bright orange “FIRESTORMS! SECOND WAVE ,” KTLA-TV Channel 5’s “WILDFIRES” and Channel 9’s “SOUTHLAND on FIRE.”

Then, with the disaster taking on a second life as a sales pitch, came the inevitable firestorm of promos. Dramatic voice-supported fire pictures: “The fire watch and the team you trust. The ‘Eyewitness News’ team, only on Channel 7.” And: “Again smoke fills the skies of Southern California. And ‘Eyewitness News’ is there live!” Plus this on Channel 4: “When it happens, where it happens, as it happens. . . .”

Somewhere in Topanga Canyon on Wednesday, it was happening for--of all people--KTLA entertainment reporter Sam Rubin. How much did the firestorm stretch the staff of Channel 5? So much, apparently, that even that great gagster Rubin was assigned to fire coverage. Even more astounding than that, he got through his story with a straight face.

The stunningly dumb question of the week came from someone else, a Channel 9 reporter who asked a Malibu man who had just lost his house to fire: “Were you expecting this?”

The fire victim looked confused. Also confused was the reader who left a recorded message at The Times saying he had made an incredible discovery while watching Channel 4’s coverage of the Malibu fire. He said, “Did you know the guy who replaced David Letterman is acting as a reporter? I saw him inside the burning house.”

Well, close. The man inside the burning house was Channel 4 reporter Conan Nolan. The man who replaced Letterman on NBC is Conan O’Brien.