TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121691/1216102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 117 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 32

PRESS

What's in a Middle Name?


Plenty. And some 300 curious journalists are watching the William
Kennedy Smith trial on TV, like everyone else.

By JOE QUEENAN/WEST PALM BEACH


    In the world of journalism, there are datelines that burn
forever in the crucible of memory: Berlin '45. Little Rock '57.
Leopoldville '64. Chicago '68. Now a new one can be added: West
Palm Beach '91.

    Some 300 journalists, not to mention innumerable
tabloid-TV types from shows like A Current Affair and Hard Copy,
have converged on this drowsy resort. Local TV news shows, with
their marvelous ability to manufacture hysteria, pump images out
to the heartland every night, creating the inaccurate impression
that the trial is a drama conducted at a fever pitch and that
the media coverage is a "zoo." A zoo it may be, but one with
very small, very docile animals.

    The truth is, from the point of view of the working press,
it's generally pretty dull stuff. Hours are spent hanging
around the courthouse waiting to be one of the 16 reporters
admitted to the drab little courtroom in which the case is being
tried. The rest of the time, the hundreds of journalists
(including several dozen from France, England, Germany, Spain
and Italy) lounge around a makeshift media center watching Court
TV, which they could do in their hotel rooms. At one point, a
reporter sitting in a room full of 90 journalists, who are
watching the trial on dozens of TVs, positions two tape
recorders in front of a set, ensuring that she will have
duplicate recordings of the television's audio portion. This is
not quite the way Woodward and Bernstein brought down a
President.

    Meanwhile dozens of photographers in the courtyard below
laze about, waiting for the defendant or an important witness
to come down, ignore them and bolt into a car.

    "It's unbelievably boring," says Evelyn Kusserow, a
reporter for Germany's Stern magazine, as she sits in front of
a TV in the offices of the Palm Beach Review watching public
prosecutor Moira Lasch's performance. Minutes later, a camera
crew from the German weekly Der Spiegel wanders in, ostensibly
to film a roomful of American journalists watching the televised
trial. Little do they know that one of the people they are
filming is a fellow countrywoman. Thus the Germans from Der
Spiegel have flown thousands of miles to cover the coverage of
the trial, and end up with footage of a German reporter from
Stern watching an American TV, while the trial takes place 300
yards away. Sacco and Vanzetti it ain't.

    The event does have its inspiring moments. Steve Dunleavy,
the Outback Geraldo Rivera, who cut his journalistic teeth at
Rupert Murdoch's sensationalist New York Post and now does
checkbook journalism for A Current Affair, regularly turns up
in public places, stage-whispering into his cellular phone.
Dunleavy actually becomes a cog in the machinery of justice when
Smith's attorney, Roy Black, shreds the credibility of Anne
Mercer, one of the alleged rape victim's principal witnesses,
by accusing her of spicing up her testimony after receiving
$40,000 from Dunleavy's show.

    Scant minutes after Mercer has been skewered by the
defense, Dunleavy escorts her back to her car, then glides past
rows of press cameras with a proud grin on his face. At one
point the Current Affair star is overheard chatting with a
colleague on the mobile phone. Then he abruptly breaks off and
says conspiratorially, "I'll call you back later on a safe
line."

    The journalistic horde seems to be split into two camps:
those who are covering the trial and those who are covering the
"media circus." Those who are covering the trial spend almost
all their time watching TV, then rushing out to phones or TV
cameras to utter the same phrases as their 200 peers. Those who
are covering the media circus spend their time interviewing
other journalists: reporters from the Miami Herald grill
reporters from France-Soir, while reporters from Italy's La
Repubblica patiently answer questions posed by reporters from
the Palm Beach Post.

    The electronic media are somewhat more resourceful. The
night before the trial, a popular local watering hole holds a
look-alike contest for women who think they resemble presiding
Circuit Judge Mary Lupo. A team from Geraldo Rivera's media
empire turns up and obtains live footage of dozens of other
journalists ordering Diet Pepsis and Campari-and-seltzers at the
event. The cameraman zeroes in on the bartender as he mixes a
drink and passes it to a thirsty reporter. Lights, camera,
action. The cameraman works for the program Now It Can Be Told.
Now it can be told that bartenders in Palm Beach mix
Campari-and-seltzers for journalists from out of town? Why
couldn't it be told before?

    Deep in their hearts, most journalists know that it's a
waste of resources to have 300 reporters covering a murky rape
trial in Southern Florida while the economy is disintegrating,
the tropical rain forest is vanishing, the Bush Administration
is stumbling, and the AIDS crisis is worsening. But the public
seemingly can't get enough of the Kennedys, so reporters pour in
from Italy, from France, from Spain, from Britain, from
Manhattan, from everywhere. "I am here because of the Kennedy
name," says Yvon Samuel of France-Soir. "Willie Smith is a
nobody."