How Publicity Robs Tragedies of Meaning

There was enough news in the Criminal Courts Building Wednesday to overwhelm even the most sensation-seeking reporters.

On the 9th floor, the prosecution and defense fought over evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial. Nine floors above, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti was making an announcement to the world press that Michael Jackson wouldn’t be prosecuted for child molestation.

Meanwhile, in a courtroom on the 13th floor, a handcuffed, pale Heidi Fleiss heard that the beginning of her trial was delayed. Her eyes were dull. Her thin face was tortured. The alleged madam to the stars looked strung out.

Most of the reporters, engaged in covering the Simpson and Jackson cases, missed her appearance. But there in Judge Judith L. Champagne’s courtroom, more than in the other places, it was possible to sense the human tragedy that marks every day in the Criminal Courts Building.

Watching Fleiss made me think about how the media shape the public’s perception of criminal cases, how it can depersonalize those who get tangled up in the criminal justice system and how the crush of reporters and cameras can shift attention away from the very tragic and important lessons found every day in the court system.

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A few months ago, Fleiss, awaiting federal and state trials on pandering, drug and tax evasion charges, was right up there in the high-publicity class. She was a star of the tabloids and tabloid TV shows, just as Simpson and Jackson are today.

The Heidi we met through the media then was a movie-of-the-week character, a tough-as-nails, wisecracking L.A. woman-child with a black book filled with famous names from all over town. She had beaten the system, according to the media myth, and enjoyed a great L.A. life.

Her appearance in court Wednesday suggested something completely different. Fleiss was more pathetic than anything else. Her face, gaunt even in her golden days, hinted at the drug use that led to her arrest last Thursday. She was jailed for violating her bail terms after tests showed she had used stimulants and antidepressants.

Only two cameras and a few reporters tracked her appearance in court Wednesday. As she sat at the defendant’s table next to her lawyer, Fleiss looked alone, abandoned, just another defendant facing drug and prostitution charges, the same as hundreds of other women confronting the same accusations in the criminal courts every day.

With most of the media occupied elsewhere, the hype was gone and I could see Fleiss as a human being.

I also saw the undistorted realities of domestic abuse in a case that preceded Fleiss’ and that drew no media attention.

Lidio Rios pleaded guilty to the felony beating of his small child. Under a plea bargain, he was placed on five years probation, ordered to serve a year in the County Jail--minus time already served, plus credit for good behavior. That means he’ll be out in 242 days.

I wondered about the mother and the child. When the man gets out of jail, he’ll be forbidden to go within 100 yards of the child. He also was ordered to take parenting classes.

How is the overloaded county probation office going to enforce that? And what if he violates parole, and harasses the mother and child? Will the cops rush to the rescue of a frightened woman who can only speak Spanish? I imagined the fear the mother will feel when the man is freed.

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The atmosphere was completely different when the press gathered in the district attorney’s office for Garcetti’s announcement on Jackson.

Garcetti was late. “I’m looking at a noon deadline and I’m sweating,” a tabloid show reporter told the D.A.’s press secretary, her voice reflecting the crisis mode in which we journalists operate during such situations.

When Garcetti arrived, all sense of order was wiped away by the shouted questions of reporters immersed in tabloid journalism.

At their core, regardless of guilt or innocence, the Jackson and Simpson cases are tragedies. But the unprecedented publicity surrounding them has robbed them of meaning and humanity. I do this for a living, but I was disturbed by it.