‘Action News’ Lays Another Stink Bomb

The same TV column that once urged that separate channels be established for car chases, for Amy Fisher and for Michael Jackson is now asking--make that begging--for a specia O.J. Channel (OJC).

Puleeeeeeze .

Here’s how it would work: You’re an O. Junkie? Fine. Switch to 24-hour OJC, because the rest of TV is mentioning the Simpson-Goldman murder case only when there’s something legitimate to report, and then only in context with other news.

Sure. Fat chance.

Instead, it’s excruciatingly obvious now that television’s expanding lunatic fringe--the hot-panting, hyperventilating O. Jerks, O. Jesters and O. Jackasses of the airwaves--will be laying down a daily trail of smelly news droppings all the way to Simpson’s expected trial. Or are the lunatics now the mainstream?

Last week’s stinkiest “bombshell” exploded at KCBS-TV Channel 2, where reporter Harvey Levin’s exclusive expose involving Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark turned out to be exclusively bogus.

That the debacle starred the tenacious Levin was unfortunate, given the good reporting he has also done at times on the Simpson-Goldman case.

Yet there he was late Wednesday night and on several newscasts Thursday, frothing over Channel 2 videotape that he said showed Clark on the grounds of Simpson’s Brentwood estate June 13 a full 17 minutes before a judge signed a warrant authorizing a search of the house and grounds.

The district attorney’s office insisted that Clark’s arrival did not precede the warrant.

Both the substance and tone of comments by Levin and an attorney he found to nourish his Clark-disaster theory left the strong impression that Clark’s so-called premature arrival at the house had seriously jeopardized the prosecution’s case against Simpson and clouded her future with it.

Not likely, disagreed a multitude of legal experts on other stations. Yet boldly undeterred by facts, Channel 2 kept to its line throughout Thursday, failing to air the views of anyone who contradicted its own minority interpretation.

“A bombshell!” anchor Michael Tuck said to Levin about the Clark story on one newscast.

That should have been the first tip-off that something was amiss, the last Channel 2 “bombshell” having been its unretracted erroneous exclusive about Simpson arriving in Chicago with a bloody golf bag not long after the knifing murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman. The second tip-off was that the “CBS Evening News” ignored the “bombshell” reported by its Los Angeles station. Its skittishness about Levin and Channel 2 was justified.

As proof of Clark’s so-called premature arrival at the Simpson mansion, Levin repeatedly had noted a running time code or counter on the Channel 2 videotape showing that the footage was transmitted at 10:28. A judge didn’t sign the search warrant until 10:45 a.m.

Had the D.A.’s office flipped? How could it dispute Channel 2’s time counter? Why would it even bother, in fact, given the weight of legal expertise that repudiated Channel 2’s assertion that Clark’s time of arrival was significant?

All sorts of scenarios flew through your mind, including the most exotic one of all: Could it be--and this was really off the wall--that Channel 2 was wrong?

Yup.

*

Word leaked from Channel 2 early Friday morning that the 10:28 time on the daytime footage did not approximate when it was shot but merely when it was fed to the station’s studios in Hollywood from one of its satellite trucks at the Simpson estate. Fed at 10:28, to be sure.

10:28 in the evening.

Inevitably, it took a while for the truth to wriggle its way through Channel 2’s fatty protective layers. It was forced to publicly admit Friday that the Clark story--which appeared trivial even if it were accurate--had no substantiation. Increasing the resonance, that admission was also reported on the “CBS Evening News,” CNN and other newscasts across the nation.

All right, a whopper error. It’s that kind of incompetence that makes those kids at “Action News” so darned lovable.

Yet something much more serious loomed here.

According to well-placed Channel 2 sources, news director Bob Jordan was informed about the correct time on the counter at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. But he still allowed a version of the fallacious story to run on the station’s 11 p.m. newscast.

If Jordan did permit a story to air that he knew to be incorrect, that was journalistic fraud--grounds for dismissal in most newsrooms.

Jordan says that although he was alerted Thursday night that the story was wrong, he didn’t become convinced of it until Friday morning. Even accepting that explanation, it puts him in the position of approving a story for the 11 p.m. newscast that was then known to be in doubt, at the very least. And the next morning--some 12 hours after the story had all but disintegrated--Channel 2 still ran a news promo in which the Clark story was touted as a “bombshell.”

Wrong, of course. Nor was Channel 2’s appalling lack of ethics a bombshell to anyone who watches its newscasts with any regularity.

Forced into a public confession, Channel 2 had Levin go on the air several times Friday to retract the story--sort of--and apologize. Even then, however, the station appeared to be trying to squirm away from taking complete responsibility. Tracking its mea culpas through various newscasts proved instructive.

A highly apologetic Levin said at noon only that the tape “could have” been fed at 10:28 in the evening instead of the morning, as if there remained doubt. He also said that news director Jordan learned of the error “last night” when the technician who recorded and logged in the tape “came forward” to reveal the discrepancy.

His vagueness about the time, and his failure to mention that Jordan reportedly learned what had happened almost five hours before the story’s last run, were significant, appearing to deflect blame from Jordan, the man ultimately responsible. And in using the words came forward , the statement had left the impression that the night-shift technician himself was the real culprit, the one who had something to confess.

Instead, according to station sources, he was merely the innocent whistle-blower.

At 5 p.m. Friday, the profusely repentant Levin from noon was replaced by a Levin reading not a correction but a business-like “clarification.” Channel 2 “made a mistake” in a story, he reported. A mistake? The entire story was a mistake. Noting the time counter mix-up, Levin added that it was now “possible”--not even probable--that the tape had been fed to the station in the evening instead of the morning.

*

Then came the real burlesque, an exercise in blatant self-exoneration, as Levin was followed by a Channel 2 story pointing out goofs by other media in the Simpson-Goldman coverage. The story noted how hard the media were working to bring this story to viewers--that’s it, the public is to blame for the errors--and flippantly concluded: “Media watchers say mistakes are inevitable.”

So we should relax and enjoy them?

By late Friday, meanwhile, suspicions arose that Jordan’s evolving “spin” was being ghostwritten by the Mad Hatter. He told The Times that even though he wasn’t confident that the time of 10:28 a.m. cited in Channel 2’s now-retracted report was fact, “I’m not convinced that the time was in error.”

If this episode were unique, you could accept it. As bad as Channel 2 is, however, it’s merely the goofiest circus clown in the crowded Volkswagen. KNBC-TV Channel 4 is only marginally saner on its good days, and the rest of the TV pack has hardly distinguished itself in covering . . . and covering . . . and covering . . . and covering the Simpson-Goldman case.

In fact, the case may have become a seminal moment in the regression of TV journalism, with the electronic cannonballs careening out of control as never before. Amy Fisher was bad. Michael Jackson was worse. But now has come the ultimate horror, the recurring nightmare.

Blared CNN’s Larry King last week from somewhere in the pack of huffing-and-puffing marathoners pouring sweat over O.J. Simpson: “It’s the story that won’t go away!”

Kept alive by a media that won’t go away.

Thank goodness for summer vacations. For a while, at least, I’m outta here.