THE SIMPSON TRIAL : Patrolling for Sound Bites on a Quiet Day

On the first day of the O.J. Simpson trial, the world media was like an army with nobody to fight.

The glacial process of jury selection didn’t start until Monday afternoon. It featured the humdrum excuses of citizens who must pass up the Simpson jury because they can’t get off work or must care for sick relatives.

Having been through such questioning as a potential juror, I was glad Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito banned the press from the room, except for three pool reporters who will relay the news to their colleagues. Otherwise, I might have had to watch.

Under normal circumstances, the reporters’ bosses would have told them to forget about filing a story on a day such as this. But with the O.J. case, forget the normal.

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The army is vast and its equipment is expensive. I’ve never covered a war, unless you count our periodic riots. But I’ve been assigned to several press-heavy national political conventions and even by those standards, the Simpson media presence is overwhelming.

It’s easy to understand why the army is here. While most people think the news media have behaved irresponsibly in covering the case, according to the Los Angeles Times Poll, they can’t get enough of those irresponsible words and pictures.

Three out of five of those questioned by the poll said they watch the Simpson news closely. That’s 60% of the 1,703 Los Angeles County adults interviewed last week.

In other words, people are interested. They read, listen and watch. That’s why the Simpson media army is on duty. The story brings in readers, listeners, viewers and advertisers.

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I’m used to being part of a horde of reporters, but this was a real shock to one of my readers. She called to complain that the television networks and stations are paying the county just $24,000 a month for the use of a parking lot across from the Criminal Courts Building, the media army base called Camp O.J.

The lot contains more than 40 satellite trucks and trailers, along with huge scaffolding in the air. These support the platform stages for network correspondents. The cost of all this to the television industry, plus cables, phone lines and other equipment could easily reach into the millions, technical consultant Scott Shulman told the Associated Press’ Anh Bui.

My reader said the television operations should pay more than $24,000 a month. “How much more?” I asked. “Five hundred thousand a month?”

“Why not,” she replied.

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All through the day, elements of the army fanned out from Camp O.J. and subsidiary installations, searching for news that was hard to find.

Some of them found Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press, one of the pool reporters, who was in the press room, on the phone to her office and, at the same time, answering a question from her colleague, Michael Fleeman, sitting in front of her, writing a story on his computer.

Microphones and tape recorders were thrust at her. Reporters asked questions about what had happened in court.

The intrusion would disturb some reporters. But the AP is a high pressure organization and its staff is trained to be cool in the face of distraction or even disaster. Deutsch calmly answered the questions, although she didn’t have much news. One of the reporters tried the psychological approach, an examination of Deutsch herself: How do you feel about what you’re doing?

Deutsch’s answer didn’t make a great sound bite. “I hope I can provide the information everybody wants,” she said. But it was worth more than what some of the other elements of the media army were picking up.

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Outside the courthouse, a man with white makeup and a red cape was being interviewed by a television reporter. He was asking the man whether the scene outside the courthouse was dignified.

A print reporter was interviewing a Criminal Courts Building fixture, the man who urges all jurors to ignore the judges’ instructions and vote their conscience. He sees this as a national crusade, but during the preliminary hearing, the media tired of him in a few days. With new reporters in town, his crusade has revived.

It was a slow news day at the courthouse, but there was a lesson in it. Although there was nothing to do, the army was in place and its commanders felt obligated to keep their troops on the move--an example of how much the Simpson case is distorting values in the news business.