Why Can’t TV Cover Politics the Way It Does Simpson?

We all know the impact of television on the criminal justice system, but I got a fresh insight the other day in a bare room on the 12th floor of the Criminal Courts Building.

News executives and technical people from L.A. television stations, CNN and Court TV were meeting to go over plans for the building’s new electronic pressroom, which may cost the stations as much as $250,000. It’s not just for the O.J. Simpson trial, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 19, but for all time, the group was told. Or at least as long as the creaky building survives.

As I watched these two dozen or so men and women discuss cables, phone connections, picture quality, power sources and monitors, I wondered why the stations didn’t expend all this attention and money on some other stories I have covered recently.

Specifically, I was thinking about events that will shape our lives much more than the Simpson trial. You seldom see television on the campaign for governor of California. Nor was the medium present much during last year’s campaigning for Los Angeles mayor. Yet television is the way most people get their news. America’s fix on the world, our vision of the Southland, is heavily influenced by what we see on TV.

TV’s absence from political campaigns and many other public policy events reflects its view of what’s hot and what’s not. Politics bores local TV. Trials, especially Simpson’s, are blazing hot.

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The importance of the Simpson story was evident at the meeting, organized by the Radio Television News Assn., where L.A.’s highly competitive broadcast news organizations put aside differences to work on matters of mutual concern.

For example, there is the issue of parking for TV’s big trucks and generators. The operator of the parking lot next to the Criminal Courts Building quadrupled his rates during the Simpson preliminary hearing, charging $4,600 a day for 80 spaces, which comes to an individual daily tab of $57.50.

The RTNA is trying to find cheaper spaces. They’re hoping for a better location too. During the preliminary, carbon monoxide fumes from the generators poured into nearby air conditioning intakes and wafted through the Criminal Courts Building. A Cal/OSHA inspector was called to order the generators turned off.

Despite their eagerness, and the high revenues from commercials, some of the stations seemed to fit the “slow pay” classification. RTNA President Milli Martinez, a KABC-TV executive producer, had to ask the deadbeats to pay up for parking and other expenses still owed from the preliminary hearing.

Scott Shulman of KABC-TV outlined the difficulties of wiring the new pressroom, which will replace cramped quarters on the floor below where a jungle of wires and cables made it difficult to walk.

Although he wore the casual attire of television technical people--jeans, athletic shoes and sport shirt--Shulman was pure business. The atmosphere in the room reminded me of news executives planning for a national political convention.

Shulman explained how cables will be run through conduits above the ceiling and behind the walls, through asbestos, down to the first floor, where there’s a telephone connection. “One of the great costs is going through the asbestos in the building,” Shulman said. “We can’t leave this system the way it is now,” he said. “We want it better.

All the new cables and connections will make it possible to cover more than one big trial at a time. That may happen in September. Heidi Fleiss, accused of being L.A.’s latest madam to the stars, goes on trial Aug. 27 on charges of pandering and selling cocaine. The Simpson and Fleiss trials will probably overlap, making the Criminal Courts Building the sensation capital of the country, if not the world.

“Our goal was to have it done by Heidi Fleiss,” said President Martinez, “but that’s impossible.”

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The fact that local TV is spending up to a quarter of a million dollars for a Criminal Courts Building pressroom emphasizes its place as a permanent presence in our criminal justice system. Court TV, with its pioneering live trial programming, showed the stations what they should have known in the first place: Trials are made for television, just as they have been for the stage and films.

We’ve seen the results in recent televised trials. Judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys have been transformed into celebrities, as have jurors. This new force may be affecting the outcome of cases, although at this early stage nobody is quite sure how. What we do know is that the criminal justice system is such a powerful force that any change in it affects many lives.

The media have the obligation of educating the public about what’s happening. Once the Simpson trial is completed, I wonder if local television will stay on the job in its high-tech new pressroom--even when there are no hot trials.