For KCBS, No News Is Good (Enough) News

There’s something noble and uplifting about a TV station that elevates principle over profit.

Now you take KCBS-TV Channel 2, which week after week, month after month, year after year watches its distinctive brand of newscasting get obliterated in the ratings--a clear, emphatic rejection by the vast bulk of Los Angeles viewers--yet stubbornly refuses to waver in its tenacious commitment to sham and sheer, tasteless banality.

Clearly, this determined station and its “Action News” can teach us all something about consistency and dedication to values.

These values resurfaced again last week when Channel 2 jumped at the opportunity to prove that its horrid ratings during the November sweeps had only stiffened its resolve to stay the course of “Action News” and virtuously press on with its relentless crusade to alienate viewers.

The occasion was Wednesday’s sketchy, rumor-ridden preliminary report of Michael Jackson collapsing in New York’s Beacon Theater during a rehearsal for an HBO concert, which later had to be canceled. Channel 2 boldly knifed into its regular afternoon programming with extended live, uninformed, speculative coverage moored to its Manhattan sister station, WCBS-TV, and interwoven with its own localized Los Angeles reporting and excerpts of a supernatural Jackson performing in his “Thriller” video. Well, you run the pictures you have.

The coverage culminated with several minutes of raw, unedited footage of a furious, jostling argument between a WCBS-TV reporter on the street outside Beacon Theater and some guys, apparently security guards, who were objecting to the TV camera’s presence. At one point somebody shot the “finger” at the camera, followed by the reporter angrily responding with several loud, excoriating utterances of the famous and colorful “F” word.

It was paparazzi-style journalism in action as well as quintessential charge- blindly- onto- the- air- with- no- information- but- stay- there- and- report- anyway “Action News.”

The rest of its live coverage that afternoon went something--though not exactly--like this:

Channel 2 anchor: To repeat, pop star Michael Jackson has collapsed in New York while rehearsing for an HBO special and was taken away by paramedics. Here’s what we don’t know at this time. We don’t why he collapsed. We don’t know if he really did collapse. We don’t know what his doctors are saying. We don’t know if it really was Michael Jackson. For an update on what we don’t know, let’s go back to New York.

New York reporter: Yes, here’s the latest right up to the second. We’re not absolutely certain what we don’t know, but our ignorance at this point appears to be substantial and significant, and is something we’re continuing to monitor. Only a few minutes ago, we learned nothing from this exclusive interview with someone who had no information about what happened to Michael.

New York pedestrian: I heard a rumor from my cousin that someone collapsed after being mugged just across the street there last week.

New York reporter: That came perilously close to being information, and we’ll stay on it, of course, in case someone really was mugged and that someone was Michael’s estranged sister, La Toya.

Channel 2 anchor: Who hasn’t been heard from, making you wonder if she also collapsed somewhere while rehearsing.

New York reporter: All our prayers are with her.

Channel 2 reporter: This curious dearth of information about Michael’s mysterious possible collapse--and we don’t know at this time if his doctors have ruled out the cause being exhaustion, food poisoning, malaria, clinical depression or heavy makeup, because we haven’t talked to them--has all of Los Angeles on edge. Our camera aboard Chopper 2 is now showing you Los Angeles, where on the street Los Angelenos are telling us, exclusively, just how terrible they feel about not knowing if there’s anything to know about what may have happened to Michael.

Channel 2 reporter: Are you devastated?

Pedestrian: Yes.

Channel 2 reporter: How devastated would you be if Michael collapsed after being squeezed by a giant octopus?

Pedestrian: Very.

Channel 2 reporter: More devastated than if it turned out that he collapsed after being chased by wild hyenas?

Pedestrian: Then I’d be very, very devastated.

Channel 2 reporter: As we all would be, because it would be the first instance of an African American mega-star being chased by wild hyenas inside a theater while rehearsing for an HBO special.

Channel 2 anchor: Reported to you exclusively on “Action News,” by the way. Now, for a response from the Hyena Rights Foundation in Kenya. . . . Well, we’ve lost our satellite on that, so, as we continue to pray for Michael, La Toya and our troops in Bosnia, let’s have a report on what the weather was like in New York when Michael may have collapsed, after I repeat, again, exclusively, that what we don’t know at this time is. . . .

*

MS. GRETA & MR. JOHNNIE. If O.J. Simpson goes through with his reported agreement to grant a no-holds-barred TV interview with CNN legal analyst Greta Van Susteren, he’ll be facing someone who, on paper, at least, is formidably qualified to challenge him.

Van Susteren is incisive, she’s a trial attorney herself and she is intimately acquainted with the Simpson case, having watched near gavel-to-gavel TV coverage of his trial in her capacity as a CNN commentator.

Throw all that out, however, if a recent episode of “Burden of Proof,” the CNN legal series that Van Susteren co-hosts with attorney Roger Cossack, indicates the approach she will take with Simpson, who, she says, wants his CNN interview to have “a level of credibility.”

The guest, former Simpson lead attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., was treated so deferentially that you wonder what awaits in Van Susteren vs. Simpson.

At one point, after hearing Cochran predict how terrific Simpson will be as a witness in his coming civil trial regarding the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman, Cossack mentioned reports that Simpson’s decision not to testify in his criminal trial came after he had fared badly in mock cross-examinations arranged by his attorneys.

As he had previously, Cochran vigorously denied those reports. “That’s not why he didn’t testify,” Cochran said.

The next question should have been obvious: Why didn’t Simpson testify in his criminal trial? Cossack didn’t ask, Van Susteren didn’t ask.

So much for credibility.