The Color of News

“The haiku of death.”

That’s how the city editor described them, the brief summaries of 55 apparently gang-related slayings in the San Fernando Valley in 1995, part of a special report in today’s Valley Edition.

A haiku, in case you’ve forgotten, is a poetic form with Japanese roots. The poet is allowed just 17 syllables, structured in lines of five, then seven, then five, sort of like this:

Haiku homicide

Seventeen pieces of sound

The color of blood

The editor was speaking figuratively, of course, describing the brevity of the grim litany compiled by David Colker and Donna Mungen that begins on B2. I hope you read them and I hope you read Colker’s longer account of the murder of 17-year-old Andrew Villanueva and its aftermath. He was an innocent victim of L.A.’s signature crime, the drive-by shooting. That story begins on A1.

If you haven’t read the stories, if you haven’t looked at the victims’ faces, please do so now. I’ll be waiting right here.

*

Recognize anybody in the “Gallery of the Dead”?

Chances are you didn’t know any personally, but a few names may be familiar. If you happen to be Latino or black, the odds are somewhat better that you knew somebody. The race and ethnicity of the victims, so disproportionate to the population, is striking but not surprising. The vast majority of gang-related killings are, in police parlance, black-on-black or brown-on-brown.

The photos of only a few of these victims found their way into a news report before today. Race is often a factor in news judgment. The rationale is neither necessarily as sinister as critics may think, nor as innocent as some editors and news directors would have you believe.

Think of Los Angeles murder victims whose images were staples of media coverage in 1995 and you’ll probably come up with just four, maybe five. One would be Stephanie Kuhen, the blond, blue-eyed toddler shot in a gang attack on Cypress Park’s “Avenue of Assassins.” Another would be Linda Sobek, the blond ex-Raiderette and model allegedly slain by a photographer. Two others, of course, would be named Nicole and Ron, who first achieved their sad fame in 1994.

You can probably tell where this is going. Count me among the guilt-ridden journalists who bemoan the way that race, celebrity and sex appeal influence news coverage--and how news coverage, in turn, can influence priorities of government and law enforcement.

Consider the millions spent on the unsuccessful prosecution of O.J. Simpson. Sure, it was quite a show, a great entertainment value, but the resources poured into that extravaganza were resources taken away from other cases. And did you know that, even after it was known that Sobek had been killed and was buried in the forest, a platoon of detectives and deputies (and reporters and camera crews) still remained assigned to the case? The ghosts of other victims went begging, because the ex-Raiderette was the stuff of film at 11.

That wasn’t her fault. That was ours.

By ours I don’t just mean the media. The public doesn’t get off the hook. Every day we journalists try to figure something out: Are we supposed give people what we think they want or what we think they need? We end up delivering a bit of both, but every story is a value judgment. We are saying: “This matters.”

Race, celebrity, sex appeal. The Simpson case had all three, plus no shortage of intrigue. Early on, I fretted that the media was creating the public’s fascination. In retrospect, I think it was more the other way around. But this is like asking the old question about the chicken and the egg.

And to think, it wasn’t long ago that we in L.A. were absorbed with a riot and a videotaped police beating in Lake View Terrace. One era flowed into another, from Rodney King to Simpson, with an earthquake as intermission. Before all that, L.A. was a pretty optimistic place. Oh, we had our routine troubles--what big city doesn’t?--but the economy was cooking, property values were soaring and nobody could throw a better Olympics.

But even in those happier times, we endured, and often ignored, the phenomenon that claims hundreds of lives here year after year after year. Gang violence is such a big story that it’s treated like a little story--a matter of happenstance, like car accidents or minor toxic spills.

Another 15-year-old shot to death? Ho hum. Was he an innocent bystander? What part of town? Any white people involved?

*

Actually, that last question isn’t asked. The novelty would cry out--one reason, but hardly the only one, that the murder of little Stephanie Kuhen inspired so much national coverage, prompting President Clinton to comment on the tragedy. Put a Latino, black or Asian family in that car, and would America--yes, especially white America--have been so moved?

But the fact that the race of the victims, or the suspects, influences news judgment is not necessarily evidence of racism. What we news-bearers are looking for is novelty, an “angle.” Questions of celebrity, glamour, race, locale--all ultimately help determine the novelty that contributes to newsworthiness. In the case of Stephanie, for example, part of what fascinated the media was the circumstance. One wrong turn ended in death.

It took me a long time to appreciate all this and, the truth is, I don’t appreciate it all that much. In a profession that touts the value of “fairness,” it stills seems unfair, this implication that white lives matter more.

I’ve written my share of gang stories. In my first few years at The Times, I was based in southeast L.A. County, sometimes writing about “the increasingly common tactic” of drive-by shootings. There was one in Lynwood: A neighbor ran outside to help the dying boy. Then the shooters drove by again--and this time the Good Samaritan was killed.

Hell of a story, but it didn’t make Page 1. It bugged me that stories about teenagers killing each other were buried inside while a murder in Westwood or the day-to-day troubles in Northern Ireland were landing on Page 1. It bugged the cops too.

I remember my first gang story. F Troop was a big gang in Santa Ana. Still is. Twenty-one years have passed since the faculty advisor of MEChA, a Chicano student group, arranged for me to interview with a gang “president.” He told me guys should settle beefs with fists, not guns. This was the headline:

F Troop Prez--’I’m Just

Trying to Stop the Killing’

Five more syllables and we’ve got haiku. How about this:

Nobody listened.