The News Court, Back in Session

Wrong again.

The McMartin preschool defendants did it. Were they a guilty-looking bunch in the mid-1980s or what? Sure they molested and terrorized those kiddies in Manhattan Beach for years. No doubt about it. They did it because they were accused of doing it--kiddies don’t lie about such things--and because members of the media said they did it.

Wrong.

Richard Jewell did it. Sure he planted the bomb that exploded during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta where he was a security guard, causing one death and scores of injuries. He did it because he fit the profile of a bomber. He did it because an anonymous FBI leaker called him a primary suspect. He did it because he was fat and utter hicksville, the kind of hapless blob who was easy pickings for media predation. He did it because members of the media said he did it.

Wrong.

John and Patsy Ramsey did it. Sure one or both murdered their 6-year-old Barbie doll, JonBenet, in Boulder, Colo., in 1996. And if only one did the deed, the other surely was an accomplice or knew about it. They did it because Boulder cops kept them under an “umbrella of suspicion.” They did it because they dolled up JonBenet for beauty pageants, and that teed off a lot of media and others. They did it because we just didn’t like ‘em. They did it because members of the media, through the tone and sheer tonnage of their coverage, said they did it.

Wrong.

At least there’s no provable case, based on Wednesday’s word from Boulder Dist. Atty. Alex Hunter that a grand jury probe of 13 months had produced no charges against the Ramseys or anyone else.

No charges? Weren’t they guilty of being rich, haughty and unavailable to be ranted at in person, forcing us instead to charge, indict and lynch them in absentia? Yes, but that was their right.

This was never about possible guilt or innocence, only about fairness being extended to those who remain innocent under the law, and about those in the media who were wringing everything from this case the way someone squeezed the life from JonBenet.

Perhaps now, said Patsy Ramsey’s sister, Pam Paugh, on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Wednesday night, the nation’s most primordial ooze--otherwise known as media--will “zip it up.”

Sure. Dream on.

“In the ‘50s in this country, the question was, ‘Who lost China?’ ” MSNBC’s rabble-rousing sore loser of a talk TV host John Gibson proclaimed Wednesday after Hunter spoke briefly. “The question now is, ‘Who lost JonBenet?’ ”

As if taking caffeine intravenously, meanwhile, the Fox News Channel’s own swirling funnel of fury, interviewer-commentator Bill O’Reilly, was ready to be straitjacketed early Wednesday evening, calling Hunter a “boob” and shouting: “What a bunch of crap!”

And in Los Angeles, KABC-TV devoted some of its 11 p.m. newscast to asking some guy from the National Enquirer about its plans for the case now that there wasn’t a case. He said he’d like to put JonBenet’s parents under hypnosis to see what was in their minds “and in their hearts.”

That’s it, hypnotize their hearts.

I was vacationing on Dec. 26, 1996, when I turned on CNN in my hotel room and learned of the death of JonBenet Ramsey and of the media’s convergence on Boulder at an opportune time because they were in between sensational stories they could distort and blow out of proportion. On the screen was this beautiful elfin child whose rouge and crimson lips made her appear much older, a crinolined Baby June in “Gypsy” coming to mind.

During the next few days, I kept tuning in and noticed that in no time her death had reached the stage where it was famous mainly because it was famous, with coverage assuming the kind of heart-thumping, unstoppable life of its own that’s become typical in such cases.

I wondered why so much attention was being given this slaying in contrast to all the others. Why did this child’s tragedy outrank others on the media’s calamity scale, the weight of this attention assigning JonBenet’s death more importance than the losses of countless other children whose brutal unsolved slayings go either unnoted or capsulized in a few lines?

Only later did I comprehend the seduction.

She was a “beauty queen.” She was white. She had rich parents.

And especially critical, TV had footage of JonBenet, pageant clips of her in costume and makeup that it could play again and again and again and again. Just as it still does even now, recycling the impression that John and Patsy Ramsey imprisoned their daughter in her mini-harlot identity full time.

The implication is that even if not guilty of murder, at the very least they had put her in harm’s way by having her compete with other adult-like miniatures. As if these kids were being bumped off regularly, and pedophiles and other creeps who prey on children do so only when their small victims are sexily permed and lipsticked like Miss Americas.

Oh yes, the Ramseys, too, were easy pickings.

So easy, that tabloid and mainstream media often merged in covering this story.

So easy that the syndicated “Hard Copy” at one point taped someone insisting JonBenet was murdered by her mother because she wet her bed.

So easy that Fox News interviewed a woman claiming to be John Ramsey’s mistress and saying: “I feel that he was definitely involved, knowing his personality the way I do.”

So easy that Geraldo Rivera aired on his former syndicated talk show a mock civil trial of the Ramseys that found them “liable for the wrongful death” of their daughter, a cockamamie sham presided over by former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Burton S. Katz. The same Katz who, now as an MSNBC consultant, was asked Thursday morning to explain “what evidence arguably points toward” Patsy Ramsey, as if he had any credibility remaining.

So easy that MSNBC impaled itself on its own speculation as late as Wednesday morning in the few minutes leading up to live coverage of Hunter’s announcement. That’s when Gibson asked MSNBC legal analyst Cynthia Alksne whether Hunter’s vow to answer no questions that day was “further clue” that the grand jury would indict. Her reply:

“Yes, that just supports that argument. What usually happens is that we don’t discuss an indictment as a prosecutor until the defendants know about it and they have come into court to answer for it. So when they surrender, which they undoubtedly will do, assuming there’s an indictment in the very near future, then he’ll read the indictment and take some very limited questions until the people who have been arrested have surrendered and have been presented a copy of the indictment.”

Two minutes later, Hunter said there would be no arrests or indictments. And a day later, much of TV was still asking who killed JonBenet, and whether it was her parents, who will wear this indelible scarlet letter forever.

Not to worry, though, for some in the media were taking one of their periodic harsh looks at themselves, just as they did after the McMartin and Jewell debacles. “What part did we play in this case?” someone asked so earnestly on MSNBC Thursday morning that you almost believed he gave a damn.

Yes, America, no more accuse and abuse. Hereafter, total zip up.

Wrong.