As the 1935 Lindbergh kidnapping trial suggests, courtroom media circuses are old hat. What has changed with the presence of live TV coverage is the collective mental lens applied to legal proceedings, real and fictional-all coming through on the same screen. How does Moira Lasch compare to Susan Dey on “L.A. Law”? It’s a serious question for viewers.
The broadcasting of trials isn’t completely new, though it was largely abandoned for 40 years. The famous 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial, where Clarence Darrow battled William Jennings Bryan over the theory of evolution, was broadcast from Tennessee by Chicago-based WGN radio. And buying the story of witnesses–as “A Current Affair” bought Anne Mercer’s–is straight out of “The Front Page.” It’s true that there are now far more camera crews at big trials. But in the old days, there were far more big daily newspapers. So it evens out.
What has changed most is simply context. If the press is better educated, better behaved and no sleazier than in the past, it is also creating a different version of reality. Live coverage is supposed to strip away the filter of print, and it does show more. But it distorts, too–juxtaposing confusing images, often unintentionally.
Consider the images conveyed by CNN, which tries to have it every which way. It interrupts its regular programming to cover the Smith trial gavel to gavel–ostensibly because of its news value. But then it interrupts the trial every few minutes–often at critical junctures– to air endless commercials, including, weirdly enough, one for Oliver Stone’s upcoming movie “JFK” and another for St. John’s University, where students were recently acquitted on rape charges. (The transition before the commercial break often includes a shot of William Smith pointing with outstretched arm in exactly the manner his uncle Jack made famous at presidential press conferences.) The big networks are airing the most graphic sexual testimony imaginable–as they did during the Anita Hill hearings. But they still refuse to allow condom ads, citing taste. Perhaps the most peculiar contextual moment came during the testimony of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Having crowded out most other news to cover the trial, CNN included a “News Update” crawl line under Kennedy’s live appearance on the stand, It said: “Magic Johnson, C. Everett Koop to co-author safe sex guide.”
It all blends together. Is “Hard Copy” news? Plenty of viewers think so. Most distorting of all is the effect of live TV coverage on the relative play of stories. Imagine, for instance, if CNN and Court TV could have televised the trial of Manuel Noriega instead of the Smith case. Would the Noriega trial–which is, after all, the outgrowth of an American war–be covered by papers around the country with small wire-service accounts buried in back pages, as it is now? (The Smith case, by contrast, is given big play, including in NEWSWEEK.) The Noriega trial is not without news, including allegations of knowledge of drug trafficking by high-ranking U.S. officials. But it hasn’t been certified as an important story by TV. By some Gresham’s law of coverage, the bad too often drives out the good, first on TV, then in print. It’s these choices, not the time-honored “Front Page” antics of tabloid reporters, that comprise the true journalistic legacy of the William Kennedy Smith case.
