Another Interview You Won’t See on TV

Acting on the advice of his lawyers, who feared that he could be set up for a confrontation, rather than having a conversation, Howard Rosenberg has made a cowardly decision not to speak to Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric of NBC News, should they request an interview. Instead, he has granted the following exclusive interview to himself.

Question: What a Wednesday! As if the planet were in peril, NBC broke into its regular daytime programming to have Brokaw announce that O.J. Simpson had canceled his scheduled appearance that night for an enormously hyped interview with Brokaw and Couric on NBC. TV responded with typical fury and frenzy. Newscasts were packed with news and commentary about the story that there wouldn’t be a story. The usual egos and loose lips hit the airwaves like Marines at a beachhead. Out poured the familiar reporters, pundits and wags who had spent months spewing rhetoric about Simpson’s trial, as Americans sat on the edges of their seats this week absorbing the latest spin and speculation. A real blockbuster, huh?

Answer: That’s the point. It isn’t that big a story. Just when you think news coverage can’t get lower, it does. You wouldn’t get this much fuss if President Clinton had canceled a scheduled interview with NBC. Same goes for anyone else except Simpson.

No one seems to notice that this emperor is nude. Still trapped in the Simpson trial’s sticky residue of sensationalism, we’ve become our own waxy yellow buildup. Steve Futterman, a reporter for NBC/Mutual radio, got it right when he said Wednesday about Simpson’s cancellation in a piece for Canadian TV: “It’s the most publicized interview that never took place.”

I mean, how can a non-interview become such a big story? The big news is that there is no big news, is that it? The answer, of course, is that the bigness is a carry-over of epic publicity about the mere scheduling of the interview, a typical celebration of the process even before it has yielded anything. And if there had been a Simpson interview on TV, and it had produced nothing, the “blockbuster” would have been that the interview had occurred, and NBC had gotten it.

In lieu of that, we have the folly of these two so-called big stories, one that there will be an interview, the other that there won’t be an interview--in effect, a sandwich with nothing between the bread. Two stories, both of which have added mightily to the body of verbiage, but not to the body of information about the Simpson case.

The present raging obsession concerns Simpson’s reasons for backing out. Was it really that his answers might undermine his defense in pending civil suits regarding the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman, as his attorneys claim? Or did they or Simpson merely get cold feet, fearing that he would blow up or misspeak under pressure? What’s the point of even speculating about it?

Q: The point is that in either case, we now know that Simpson or his legal team, or both, fear him being publicly interrogated about the case, with no questions off limits, right?

A: And we didn’t already know that after his trial ended without him taking the stand? That wasn’t sufficient for you? Do you want it carved in stone?

Q: But there’s the question of his reputation. Don’t you agree that canceling the interview with NBC, and instead phoning the New York Times and giving a narrow, self-serving, impromptu interview to an entertainment reporter was terrible for his PR image?

A: Oh, sure, like he was on a real PR roll after the trial, right? Frankly, I was expecting more intelligent questions from you. Look, the polls tell us that Simpson was already despised by perhaps a majority of Americans--people who believed he was a vicious murderer or, at the least, a wife batterer--so how much lower could he dive in popularity? And you’re mistaken if you think that pulling out of the NBC interview undermined his credibility with his hard-core supporters--African American, white or whatever.

Q: What were your expectations for the interview, in terms of producing news?

A: Low.

Q: Then you agreed with those who opposed it, the masses of angry picketers at NBC studios in Burbank and the callers who jammed the network’s phone lines with their protests?

A: Absolutely not. What I just loved was Tammy Bruce, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, saying on TV Wednesday about Simpson: “You are not welcome on our airwaves, you are not welcome in our culture.” Who granted her or her organization proprietorship over the public airwaves? Who appointed them spokespersons for our culture?

Due largely to the omnipresent media spotlight on the Simpson trial, Americans had such a large emotional investment in its outcome that it’s now hard for many of them to step back from it and get on with their lives. Their anger is certainly understandable.

Yet why the huge uproar over news that Simpson had agreed to be interviewed on NBC? We’re assured that no money was to pass hands, no favors to be given. Is there some arbitrary rule now against news organizations interviewing widely perceived bad guys? Is that the kind of news blackout that Americans want? If so, where were the protesters when Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi got himself an interview on U.S. television?

Where are the protesters when networks, stations and TV personalities periodically do ranting jailhouse interviews of that antique loon Charlie Manson during ratings sweeps periods? That is cynical and exploitative! Where were the pickets when serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy were interviewed on national TV, interviews they agreed to surely because they were seeking some kind of emotional pay-back from the camera, just as Simpson hoped to gain from his own TV exposure?

Of course, these guys were jailbirds, Simpson isn’t. He’s free, hence the frustration for many. Yet there’s another difference. Unlike them, Simpson was acquitted by a jury of his peers. Under our system of justice--the same system that packed away Manson and Dahmer and sent Bundy to the electric chair--he remains presumed innocent, regardless how despicable he may be in the eyes of millions of Americans. Moreover, in not taking the stand, he was exercising a right available to every other defendant in a criminal trial.

He was entitled to go on NBC, and NBC was entitled to interview him, just as those who believe him guilty of murder are entitled to that opinion.

Either because Americans are amnesiacs or unusually forgiving, some of our most notorious villains have made unlikely comebacks. Richard Nixon did. Racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace did. Washington Mayor Marion Barry did. Jean Harris, slayer of diet doctor Herman Tarnower, did. Even after reportedly paying kazillions to settle a suit brought by a boy accusing him of sexual molestation, Michael Jackson did.

Did Simpson hope that he could use an NBC appearance to recover at least a portion of his own former image and reputation by selling himself as innocent of murder? Obviously, he did. But this is news? In a broad sense, his motives were not any more manipulative than, say, Gore Vidal was Wednesday in appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” solely to promote his just-published memoir. Or, to mix apples and oranges, any more than Jackson was in his softy interviews on ABC with Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer.

Was NBC aiming to benefit from the prospect of losing a fortune by airing it without commercials? Obviously, it was, hoping that expected enormous ratings would provide a publicity rub-off on “Nightly News” anchor Brokaw and “Today” co-host Couric that would offset its financial loss and any ill will generated by the interview.

No news here, either. It’s part of that symbiotic link between news media and newsmakers that’s endemic to journalism--an unofficial, mutually beneficial pact.

Every news organization on the planet would have jumped at a Simpson interview, given there were no conditions placed on it, as NBC continues to maintain was the case in its agreement with Simpson, something he now disputes.

Q: As always, I’m awed by your great intellect. I want to thank you for your time.

A: And I want to thank you for not being confrontational.