No Lulls Allowed During the Simpson Media Storm

Readers may wonder what occupies the horde of reporters, photographers and television crews on days when there’s nothing doing at the O.J. Simpson trial.

There are a lot of things we can do. We can interview experts. Or we can try for one of those famous leaks. Many reporters are so strapped for news that they interview each other.

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Readers may find this dilemma funny. But it’s not amusing to those of us who are forced to chase news when there is none. I’ve been in that position many times, most notably at national political conventions, which have become meaningless events held long after nominations have been nailed down in primary elections.

At a Republican convention a decade ago, my colleague John Balzar and I were ordered to get an interview with Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and his wife, Elizabeth, who were much sought after by reporters desperate for news on a slow day. Being unknowns from the West Coast, Balzar and I had trouble getting an appointment. With our editor demanding results, we persisted and were brought into the Doles’ presence.

Mrs. Dole, unfortunately, couldn’t talk. Her press secretary said she had laryngitis. But she’d write answers to our questions. Desperate, we agreed. Working from her written replies, we turned out a moving account of a gutty woman ignoring illness. A couple of hours later, we got a call from the boss. I’m reading your story, he said. Nice job. I thanked him. The trouble is, he said, I’m also watching television and Mrs. Dole is being interviewed on CBS and she’s “singing like a bird.” Obviously, she’d decided to save her voice for prime time network television instead of wasting it on Balzar and me. Our editor killed the story.

Knowing the frustrations of chasing news on a no-news day, I walked Thursday morning from the paper to Fort O.J., the parking lot across the street from the Criminal Courts Building where all the television news facilities are located.

I headed to the small mobile home headquarters of Cable News Network, on the air with the news 24 hours a day. I figured CNN, with all that time to fill and with a large commitment of personnel, would be hurting more than most by a slow news day.

On this particular morning, the courtroom proceedings were routine compared to the drama expected when the actual trial starts. Defense attorneys were trying to suppress the prosecution’s evidence. The defense hardly ever wins such motions in a criminal trial and the process is seldom reported. But the CNN crew was working hard, trying to make something interesting out of it.

Reporter Marc Watts and producers John Gilmore and Veronica McGregor were watching the courtroom on monitors. Reporter Greg LaMotte and another producer were at the courthouse. Journalists at the CNN bureau in Hollywood and at headquarters in Atlanta were also monitoring the proceedings. Elsewhere in L.A., two investigative reporters and their producers were working on projects.

Reporter Watts and producer Gilmore have done 375 live reports on the Simpson case since the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were discovered in June. “It’s an ongoing drama, with high points and low points,” Gilmore philosophized. “There is a continuity to it, even on slow days.”

Later in the morning, producer McGregor and reporter LaMotte took over from Gilmore and Watts. From the monitor, they picked out a comment from Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark they wanted to use. McGregor needed something brief and sharp from the other side to balance this. When defense attorney Gerald Uelman responded to Clark, McGregor pleaded to the screen: “Uelman, just give us this sound bite right now.” He did. McGregor smiled, now possessing the sound bite she needed.

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It was a lot of work, done with speed and precision.

I couldn’t help but wonder why we put in such effort on just another day in the trial. Why this blow-by-blow coverage of the Simpson case?

The obvious reason is that it’s a big story. Much of the public is fascinated, drawn by the terrible deaths of the victims, and the sensationalism of the football hero’s arrest and trial. For this reason, people want to know everything.

Beyond this, though, the Simpson trial is a story of the criminal justice system, and of the way the police, the prosecutors, the defense and even the media operate.

To cover such a story, reporters have to be on duty, reporting each step, just as the CNN crew did.

Unlike a war or riot, this process unfolds slowly in complicated ways that are hard to explain, much less make interesting. This time, however, it seems that the public is fascinated, even ready to be educated. That’s what the media are doing on a slow day.