Live Slap to Real News

The enigma clouding Linda McCartney’s death continues. Bank on it--the news media and shrieking TV and radio talk shows will fill you in ad nauseam on the debate over where she died, her reported cremation and the status of her death certificate.

Big mystery here, big enough to keep the speculation mills operating indefinitely.

A much larger mystery connected to this story, though, is why the public doesn’t rise up and stampede the mean-spirited schnooks of KNBC-TV Channel 4 off the airwaves.

It was 11 p.m. Wednesday, and anchor Paul Moyer had that boy-have-we-got-breaking-news-for-you gleam in his eyes. As always, if you looked into those eyes, you could see clear through to the back of his head.

Yet for once it wasn’t the morning’s breaking news that the station was reporting that night. It said that NBC’s Tucson station had “confirmed” that evening that the county medical examiner there had “authorized the cremation” of McCartney and that a University of Arizona physician had “signed her death certificate.”

And the rest of its breaking news--reports that McCartney, the wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney, had died of breast cancer at the family ranch in Tucson Friday instead of in Santa Barbara, as the media had been led to believe--was mere hours old. As was a denial that her death had been an assisted suicide.

Hours old? In TV terms, that’s a clanging, three-bells flash, a drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-run-to-the-TV-set bulletin.So no wonder KNBC had one of its main men hit the road.

“Live in Santa Barbara”--live in this case implying little more than an unconfirmed rumor of his brain activity--was Chuck Henry, proclaiming breathlessly that developments in the McCartney story “keep changing almost by the hour.”

As far as Santa Barbara was concerned, that was untrue, because about the only activity in Santa Barbara at that hour consisted of TV crews like KNBC’s fishing around in the dark and going “live” with hours-old news that was being presented as fresh.

All right, that’s the usual choreography. That’s what they always do, isn’t it, go “live” to create the impression of excitement and immediacy when there isn’t any?

But this time, from Henry, there was a malicious twist, judgmental words and a tone of censure that should have been out of order on any program labeling itself a newscast, even one as dysfunctional as KNBC’s.

Now it was clear, Henry reported, “there was a deliberate attempt by the McCartney family to mislead the media.” Fair enough. But he added: “And in doing so, to mislead millions of loyal and faithful fans.”

It wasn’t only his voice that projected condemnation, but the way KNBC played this, by running footage of a candlelight memorial service for Linda McCartney in Santa Barbara as Henry went on stonily about:

“The slap on the face of those fans who’d learned that they’d been misled.”

He appeared personally wounded.

There was more, for Henry concluded his report by dropping the hammer on the McCartney family, saying that it appeared that statements coming from their camp “have not been as genuine as the outpouring of grief and support from their loyal fans.”

This indictment coming, of course, from Mr. Sincerity himself.

What sanctimonious slop. Just where do this guy and this station get off sitting in judgment of Paul McCartney regarding the way he chose to have his wife’s death reported? There may be lingering legal questions over that death certificate and cremation, and presumably they would have to be resolved. And after all, apparently McCartney did lie in this case, something that celebrities and their representatives do all too often with the media.

But is anyone less saddened by her death because it didn’t come in Santa Barbara? What’s the difference? The site of her death in no way diminishes Linda McCartney’s life or her achievements as a wife, mother and activist. Henry’s verdict notwithstanding, this deception isn’t likely to cost the McCartneys a single devotee.

As for that slap in the face, Henry had the right words, but the wrong target. Each time these KNBC clowns perform their act, it’s a slap in the face of real journalists everywhere.