Journalists covering the Peterson hearing rate it unimportant

A test of newsworthiness in the central valley
News analysis by John McManus

MODESTO -- Like giant white poppies, the dishes of 10 television satellite trucks were oriented southward toward the warming sun. Rising on taller silver stalks, ten microwave antennae towered over their news vans, most pointed west toward the Bay Area.

Millions of dollars of news-gathering equipment and scores of reporters, producers and technicians filled a dusty lot across from the Stanislaus County Courthouse last Wednesday. Yellow tape blocked off the street in front so 27 news organizations could pitch tents on the pavement. Press turnout, police said, surpassed that for Chandra Levy.

On a day when wildfires were torching scores of houses a few hundred miles to the south, within a week of local elections across the nation, while American soldiers were dying in Iraq, what had they come to report?

The testimony of an FBI forensic scientist who was describing in detail as minute as mitochondria how the genetic instructions inside these tiny organelles might identify a strand of hair found in Scott Peterson's pliers as belonging to his slain wife, Laci.

Day one of the preliminary hearing to determine whether a 31-year-old former fertilizer salesman would face trial for murdering his pregnant wife and unborn son was underway. It was a proceeding even the journalists covering it called interesting, but inconsequential.

The allocation of such massive resources to a single episode of alleged domestic violence in a nation where an average of three women a day are murdered by intimate partners raises a basic question about journalism's purpose. Is news really about entertainment -- however macabre and tragic -- or is its purpose to help citizens understand those issues and events most likely to shape their lives?

"It is a shame that we as newspapers and our friends in the broadcast world circle around this story in the name of journalism. Few of us care about the story or its implications -- lack thereof, I say," lamented one Bay Area reporter, who requested anonymity.

On a scale of 0 to 10, I asked the journalists, how interesting to the community you serve are today's events? And how important or consequential are they to that community?"

Seventeen granted interviews. (The journalists from CNN and NBC said they couldn't talk to other journalists without permission from headquarters.) Those with freedom to speak rated the day's DNA-dominated testimony at 6.6, moderately interesting.

Laci is everywoman

The broader story, many added, was off the scale. Laci Peterson was an attractive 27-year-old from the middle class. She was a month short of giving birth when she disappeared on Christmas eve. Three months later her body washed up in San Francisco Bay. And her handsome husband was carrying on an affair.

"A lot of people relate to Laci," said Mary Papenfuss who was preparing an article to pitch to Salon.com "She's kind of an everywoman ... the American dream gone bad."

"We love this stuff," said Julia Prodis Sulek of the San Jose Mercury News, "the soap opera, the mistress. It's all about Laci and the unborn child, the empathy [toward] a mother."

'obviously pandering'

How important were the day's events? Not very -- an average of 3.1 out of 10.

"This is obviously pandering," said Suzanne Phan, a reporter for KCRA-TV in Sacramento.

A reporter for a Bay Area TV station, who wished to be unnamed, gave it a 2 for importance, "if only for the gossip aspect of it. Frankly it's entertainment, especially since there are so many other stories in California."

"There's nothing really important about this thing," said KTVU photojournalist Chip Vaughn. "This is kind of reality TV."

Don Andrews, reporting for Metro Networks and KGO radio said, "It's impact on my life and [my listeners'] lives? Zip."

A spotlight on the legal system?

Some reporters gave the hearing middle marks for consequence, touting it as an educational experience for the public in how the judicial system works. One journalist, Bret Burkhart a reporter and anchor for KGO radio, said the public will learn about an important new weapon in the arsenal of investigators, mitochondrial DNA.

After the failure to convict O.J. Simpson in criminal court, several reporters said, the public has become skeptical of the judicial system. The Peterson case constituted a further test.

Whether reporting on two judicial procedures nine years apart would be a fair test of California's courts was less clear.

When asked how much their stories would examine the legal issues -- the differences between a preliminary hearing and a trial, the fairness of the state's judicial system -- or how mitochondrial DNA identifies individuals, reporters pleaded no time, no expertise, or no audience interest.

Said KGO's Burkhart, "When you get into this scientific [matter], it's going over the heads of many of us. Is it possible to make it interesting in 40 seconds?" He shook his head. But, he argued, if journalists covering the hearing mention it, talk shows and other news programs with more time will explain it later.

"If I were to do a story on mitochondrial DNA," said Julie Sedenko a reporter for KMPH- TV in Merced, "it would be a zero.

"For the evening news," she elaborated, "it's going to be just an overview. A newscast is not meant to deal with all these controversial issues on a forum basis."

On Wednesday evening's newscasts and Thursday morning's newspapers, mitochondrial DNA was prominently mentioned as a point of contention. And no reporter misrepresented the hearing as a trial. But there was little about the legal process and few details of DNA analysis the court examined for hours in the courtroom made it into the news.

In fact, half the throng of reporters in the tent police had set up to allow reporters who couldn't fit in the courtroom to listen to the proceedings did not return for the start of the afternoon session.

KTVU cameraman Vaughn, who did return, said the DNA analysis was boring. Everyone was waiting for the testimony of Scott Peterson's mistress Amber Frey, he said. "By the time Amber goes on, it will be crazy here."

Justifying the coverage

An ABC network journalist who said he couldn't speak on the record without permission from New York defended his team's presence in Modesto. "If a large chunk of people are very interested -- and this is undeniably true -- then it's news."

"I don't see anything wrong with giving the people what they want," Ms. Sulek of the Mercury News said. "I don't have a problem writing this story to be very interesting and titillating."

Is society better off when the public knows the name of Laci Peterson's unborn child but not the names of its elected representatives?

"Is that a commentary on the media or the public?" Ms. Sulek responded. "Maybe legislators should make their issues more personally meaningful."

"The press is what the public creates of it," said Ms. Pappenfuss, a free-lancer who used to write for the New York Daily News and New York Post. "It's very elitist for journalists to say what would be good for the public to know."

Questioning the coverage

But several reporters expressed misgivings about the magnitude of the coverage. A correspondent from a Bay Area TV station said if Laci Peterson were of a different race or ethnicity, the coverage wouldn't have been as great. "That's disappointing to me."

Network radio journalist Andrews said, "it used to be that consequence was essential. Not anymore."

Modesto Police Detective Doug Ridenour, charged with riding herd on the press, expressed puzzlement over the media attention. "We've had 12 other missing persons here in Modesto over the past 25 years," he said. "It's hard for me to understand why this is different. It doesn't make sense to me."

Motivated by fear

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists in Washington, DC said intensive coverage of Laci Peterson is "driven by fear as much as anything else -- if you're not covering the most sensational story, people will go to your competition."

"It reflects a cynical notion about your audience...that people are not just ignorant, but stupid," he said. "It's ultimately self-destructive. If that's what you spend much of your time on, sooner or later you'll lose audience."

"Concentrating all those resources on a very sexy [hearing] is typical of local TV all over the country, with a few exceptions," said former U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Ben Bagdikian. "The more that television accentuates it, the more [newspapers] feel they can't ignore it.

"With newspapers as well as television you have to ask yourself what else is not getting in." (Mr. Bagdikian is a member of the Grade the News advisory board.)

What do you think?