After more than 30 years of covering news in Los Angeles, I must tell you that L.A., is an industry town, and entertainment is the industry. To expect local journos to ignore that is unrealistic. Naive, even. And I was there when one of the biggest stories of all time was breaking. The O.J. Trial, that is. Or, if you prefer, “trials.” But his celebrity was just one part of it. There was so much more and it demanded unprecedented coverage.
We knew at the time that what we were doing, wall to wall non-stop coverage with a regular panel of expert pundits, was something new. I don’t think anybody realized that what we had started would be a trend on 7/24 cable channels for decades to come.
It may be difficult to believe, but at the time, only two outlets, Court TV and KTLA-TV, were carrying the pre-trial hearing(s) and then the trial wall to wall.
KTLA, was on cable and satellite systems across the country. Eventually Sky TV picked us up and we were on the air in Europe. And we did it without smartphones. I think I eventually got a fax at my desk in the courthouse. No laptop though, and I’m still not sure how I did what I did without the aid of a computer. It probably helped that we were breaking news minute by minute so there was no need to go online for additional information. It was coming from us. We were the news.
By the time the second trial started, the civil case in Santa Monica, I had finally gotten my hands on a laptop with wireless capability. My wife has compared it to being in an era that was transitioning from the horse and buggy to the automobile. I think she’s right. In fact, what we went through transitioning to computers might have been a little harder. And then The National Enquirer, starting beating us all. That, was never supposed to happen.
I doubt any of us realized that including breaking news from certain tabloids in our reporting was breaking new ground for giving the tabloids credibility they had never had. Thing is, we had to make a choice. The Tabloids were doing factual, valid stories that mattered. And they were paying for the information, something we mainstream journos would not do. Nevertheless, we ignored them at our own peril, which could mean missing a huge new part of the story. So some of us went along for the ride. Remember those photos of Simpson sitting at a shoeshine stand up in Canada wearing size 12 Bruno Maglis? KTLA, was the first tv outlet to get those photos. We got them from the Enquirer, because I was buddies with their reporter covering the trial in Santa Monica. I hadn’t paid anybody for information, I was just doing what I had to, to advance the story. And I trusted the reporter for the Enquirer. I can’t say if that would be the case today.
As for Simpson’s “slow speed pursuit” starting the trend of tv stations covering meaningless pursuits for years to come. Well, that’s true. That’s exactly what happened. However, to the best of my knowledge, it was a fever that lasted for a number of years and has since petered out? I can’t be sure, as I left SoCal in 2015, but I seem to recall fewer pursuits were being covered as the years went by. Here in the Baltimore area, only one of our four local tv stations even has a helicopter. The problem in L.A., was that the stations that carried the pursuits got huge numbers while tv stations that ignored them were crushed in the ratings race.
In retrospect, after 30 years, and as someone who was among the first journos to arrive at the murder scene and was then in the slow-speed pursuit and then covered both trials to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, it’s all true. The O.J. trials, perhaps the criminal trial most of all, changed everything, and not all for the better.
That said, I feel I have nothing to apologize for. We had a tiger by the tail. It was a story that never should have happened and was never going to end. Captain America, one of the greatest NFL running backs of all time, a nationally known good-guy movie star, had been charged with taking a knife and slaughtering two people, one of them his beautiful ex-wife, in one of the toniest neighborhoods of Los Angeles. And drugs may have been involved. And the City was just recovering from the Rodney King riots And Johnnie Cochran, a real pit bull in a courtroom, had put the LAPD on trial.
There was a joke running through the press room that O.J. Simpson, was “The guiltiest man ever to be framed.” That might be close to the truth.
We were captured by an irresistible force. Use any metaphor you want. We did the best we could and it was a privilege to be there and to call those people covering “The Trial of the Century” my colleagues and friends. It was monumental. Fallout, was inevitable. I have no regrets.
And you and your colleagues should have no regrets. Like many historic things that occur, it was conceived on the fly. And I don’t doubt that everyone used the best judgment they could, because I knew who they were out in the field and by and large were ethical and decent people. It was the perfect storm.
My Dad always commented on how awful that time in his career was. He felt trapped there at the court house and he knew it wasn’t news. It was just a bad cable show.
I sometimes did not agree with your dad. This would be one of those times.
That didn’t mean you were wrong. He wasn’t always right.
Ron,
We shared a room for 18 months. I have to say going to the cage every morning @6am for NBC Network on the 12 Floor media room for me was not drudgery. Everyday had a new and exciting twist. Where else could you get to meet some of the most famous criminal defense attorneys of our era. Whenever Melvin Sacks walked in he always stopped by my perch and talked for a while. I remember one day I decided to splurge and have my cowboy boots shined in the lobby of the courthouse when who sits down next to me for a shine, F. Lee Bailey. Where else could one have a 15 minute one on one conversation about Albert DeSalvo, Ernest Medina or Patty Hearst? Alan Dershowitz was also an interesting person who would often show up. Then there was the parade of famous TV anchors who would make an appearance like Barbara Walters, Dian Sawyer and NBC’s own Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. Yes we had our array of local news talent who were regulars like You, Harvey Levin, Furnell Chatman and the like. Then there was the chatter in the room always being broken by Steve Futterman of CBS telling everyone to SHUT UP! “I am trying to do a track”. WE never heard that from Michael Ambrosini or Pete Demetriou who also were filing radio tracks. It was a fun 18 months. Looking in the rearview mirror, I would do it again.