At Rapper’s Trial, Media May Be Dropping the Ball

One of the nation’s hottest entertainers is on trial for murder, but the media isn’t paying much attention.

Rap superstar Snoop Doggy Dogg, beloved of hordes of teenagers and Generation X-ers, and his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, are accused of the murder of a young man, Philip Woldemariam, in a Westside Los Angeles park. The prosecution calls it unprovoked homicide by Lee and Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus. Lee, who fired the gun, and Broadus, who was with him, portray the killing as self-defense--sort of an Old West gunfight. As they see it, Woldemariam was packing a gun and drew too slow.

You’d think broadcast and print journalists, not to mention the public, would be fascinated, given the way young people buy Broadus’ best-selling albums. O.J. Simpson’s trial packed the Criminal Courts Building with reporters, and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss usually drew a crowd.

But only three news organizations have assigned reporters to the trial on a daily basis--The Times’ Tina Daunt, Laura Porter of MTV and Jonathan Gold, a Times writer who is covering the case for Rolling Stone magazine.

Having been part of the Simpson circus, I was surprised to find myself in such a media-free courtroom. I don’t listen to Broadus’ music, but I knew he was big, better-known than O.J. among young people, at least before the chase.

Both the trial and the scene on the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building have much to recommend them as news.

Broadus is a tall, thin 24-year-old. He went from Long Beach’s tough African American gang life to jail for drug and parole violations before becoming one of the foremost performers of gangsta rap, which tells graphically of violent life in the ghetto.

In the courthouse one day, I rode in the elevator with Broadus and his entourage. One of them said he studied criminal justice when he was in college. In fact, he said, he wanted to be a postal inspector. Amid uproarious laughter from the others, he said he gave it up to become a bad guy.

This must have been what it was like, I thought, riding down a Las Vegas elevator with a famous casino entertainer and his buddies, when such wiseguys were at the height of their power and arrogance.

In the courtroom, Broadus is an intent, interested observer, talking frequently to his attorneys and co-defendant Lee, who has the solid build you’d want in a bodyguard.

The tragedy in the case is represented by the victim’s family--father, mother, sisters and brothers, immigrants from Eritrea, an area until recently locked in bitter civil war with Ethiopia. Most of the family is there each day.

The trial is being fought intensely, but Superior Court Judge Paul G. Flynn is running a tight courtroom.

With his tall, spare frame and his bushy, handlebar mustache, Flynn resembles a frontier-era circuit riding judge. One day, he all but shouted at Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Nison, “Sit down, sit down now.” Unhappy with the way Nison objected to a cross-examination, Flynn fined him $200 and threatened to throw him in jail if he didn’t change his ways.

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I couldn’t understand why all this didn’t add up to a bigger story.

“It’s the nature of his [Broadus’] art,” said Dan Dolan, who, as editor of the Globe, is an expert in tabloid journalism. “He’s a niche performer. Rap is popular with teenagers . . . but if you asked most American people, they would not know who he was.”

Some people said the absence of live courtroom television diminished the trial’s appeal. Others agreed with one of the prosecutors, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bobby Grace, who said “the race of the victim is a factor. Society seems to place more emphasis when a person is white, with blond hair and blue eyes.”

Another explanation was offered by MTV’s Porter, a 31-year-old New York public defender who has taken a leave to cover the trial for the music video network. It’s a generational thing, she said.

She sold the network on the idea that MTV’s young viewers “were interested in the legal system and needed a lawyer to explain the system. They thought we should have coverage by someone who is young, who wouldn’t look funny saying Snoop Doggy Dogg, like Tom Brokaw would.”

MTV has a point. The mainstream media is run by the Tom Brokaw generation. Even the youngest are too old for rap.

During the O.J. Simpson trial, the media said we were educating the public about the criminal justice system. Maybe by overlooking the Snoop Doggy Dogg trial, we are missing a chance to do the same for younger readers, to whom Simpson is a remote and ancient figure.