Simpson Case TV Coverage

The decision of your editors to include in your June 15 coverage of the O.J. Simpson case a feature piece designed to be critical of television’s coverage of the murders was so competitively self-serving and hypocritical it demands my response.

“TV Coverage of Simpson Case Criticized” uses Michael Jackson’s latest radio tirade against television news as the peg to construct yet another indictment of television as perpetrating a circus-type atmosphere in its coverage of the crime. The story aims to hold our newscasts solely responsible for somehow convicting O.J. Simpson of the murders prior to any formal charges. The article goes on to unfairly question not only the ethics of our reporting but the amount of newscast time that was devoted to the story.

The bizarre irony in all of this, of course, is that the information contained in our reports June 13 and 14 was the same information and from the same sources which The Times deemed appropriate and important enough to place on its front page June 15 under “Police Sources Link Evidence to Simpson.”

In what can only be viewed as a colossal flash of arrogance, the reprimand of television’s alleged overzealousness sits plop in the middle of two facing pages devoted to the murders, totaling over 160 column inches! While we are called to justify the probity of giving nine minutes of our June 15 late newscast to the Simpson story with four reporters on the beat, The Times meanwhile published the bylines of 22 reporters working on the story.

What we have here is more than just a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I don’t think most of the Simpson murder coverage to date by KCBS-TV or The Times has been overdone, or is unethical or unfair. This is, after all, a sensational story generating great public interest. No, an article like this appears, in as silly a fashion as it did, because even in a great paper like The Times there is always someone eager to take a whack at television news.

WILLIAM APPLEGATE

General Manager, KCBS-TV