Old Obsessions Dwarfed by Real News

Who did kill JonBenet Ramsey? Are her rich parents still under that “umbrella of suspicion”?

What about Gary Condit? Who’s he dating these days?

If it was essential for the public to know then, why is it not essential today? Why are inquiring media minds--from whom we take so many of our cues--no longer inquiring?

And Elian Gonzalez, so tender, so pure, so vulnerable, so worthy of living the rest of his life saluting the flag on U.S. soil. What are you doing now, little guy, in your Cuban homeland ruled by Fidel Castro, the aging dictator whose Communist regime the hysterical Chicken Littles of talk radio and news chat shows insisted would make you a godless android?

It’s true that newscasts and newspapers are now bulging with Afghanistan and anthrax, and their staffs are on war and bioterrorism footings. But there’s always a little space available for alternative news, and always someone who can be sprung loose to fill it, as in media coverage of this week’s trial of O.J. Simpson for alleged road rage in Miami, for which he was acquitted.

O.J. notwithstanding, why have these other stories lost their juice? As the U.S. fights its war, why are they missing in action?

The answer, naturally, is that the present turbulence has exposed and buried them. They mostly were shells of stories and high-profile space-fillers, false gods just waiting to be toppled by more deserving news. They were overblown, and media attention to them bordered on fraudulent.

In particular, they were figments of an obsession by cable news channels feeding their ravenous 24-hour appetites for strung-together sound bites that could be passed off as legitimate stories, and with repetition would ultimately assume lives of their own, justifying future coverage.

Elian comes to mind because of a brief Associated Press report about the Little Havana house of his Miami relatives, where he spent six months in 1999-2000. It’s now a shrine to him that attracted nearly 500 people when it opened on a recent Sunday. For the rest of us, with Elian and his father now resettled in Cuba, it’s out of sight, out of mind.

But hardly more out of mind today than the JonBenet case, which CNN and some magazine shows rehashed repeatedly for years after her 1996 unsolved murder, the sheer weight of this indulgent speculation informing Americans that they should care more deeply about her than about other young homicide victims.

Or more out of mind today than the former headline-hogging Condit. For months, much of the media dwelled on him tenaciously, scooping up reports of his reported philandering as if mining for gold. Since Sept. 11, however, the California congressman has been all but absent from media radar, resurfacing briefly in a blip about his reported plans to re-up for the House despite the heat on him relating to the Chandra Levy case.

Chandra who? The name is vaguely familiar. Oh, yes, Condit’s “friend,” the vanished former Washington, D.C., intern whose name stayed on the tips of tongues for months. And whose parents energized camera crews stationed outside each time they emerged from their Modesto home, the TV headline usually reporting that they had nothing new to say.

The daughter remains in the parents’ thoughts, but no longer in the media’s, which jilted her for Condit and his good times before unloading him like a bag of bricks for Osama bin Laden.

There’s nothing petty about murder, whether deaths come en masse, as on Sept. 11, or one at a time as with Chandra Levy (if foul play caused her disappearance). Yet how frivolous that attention to Condit now seems.

That would be so even if thousands of lives had not been lost to terrorism last month, followed by a major anthrax scare, this fixation on Condit and its undertone of titillating sex becoming another periodic case of the news business trivializing itself and everything it touches.

Crisis attracts prophets with crystal balls, which are everywhere now as we reassess our futures under threatening war clouds. The consensus goes like this: The world will never be the same; the U.S. will never be the same.

To validate this common wisdom, CNN ran a story this week saying that the war against terrorism is sparking a national outbreak of togetherness that is especially evident in New York City. “Since Sept. 11, we’ve definitely gotten a lot closer,” said a young man on the street beside his girlfriend. Viewers were informed also that marriage licenses were up, many restaurants were reporting “a new demand for tables for two” and dating services are seeing “sharp increases in people looking for love.” On TV, that passes for a scientific study.

Another part of this optimistic scenario? The media will never be the same, their path to truth and permanent reformation having been lighted by the 5,000-watt epiphany of Sept. 11.

With a truly cosmic story looming, as wishful thinking goes, these former amnesiacs at last have learned their lesson: No more choosing fluff over substance. News on TV hereafter will have a maturity befitting these serious times.

Well, perhaps. Let’s talk about it in a few months, if not sooner, during one of those lulls when little is happening on the war and anthrax fronts, and inquiring minds are tempted to fill space by inquiring again about Condit, if not JonBenet.

Would the same media dare to kill the news as they did earlier? They remain under an umbrella of suspicion.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.