VIEW HOLLYWOOD

The saga continues today.  13 years after he was acquitted of the murder of his ex wife and her lover, Simpson was found guilty of kidnapping, armed robbery and ten other misnomer charges.  He’s going to jail for a long time, and no one, especially the media, feels sorry for him.   AP writer Linda Deutsch calls Simpson a “sports idol turned celebrity pariah,” and I don’t even want to count how many tired writers threw a “loser in Vegas” pun in their stories (helped by the fact that he committed the crime on Sept.13, the trial took 13 days, and the jury took 13 hours to deliberate).   None of this makes for good reporting. It might prove to a few absent minded people that you’re sort of a clever writer, but it isn’t journalism, it’s catering to your audience.  We can’t find anything interesting to harp on so we choose to fixate on whatever is quirky and might indulge the reader to press on. In brief, the number 13 shouldn’t be the story, nor should the tragedy of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.  Â The journalist has been turned into a mutant, writing diatribe for the masses to engorge for a few brief seconds while they are checking their email.  Why shouldn’t we just start making our stories up again? I guess you could also blame Princess Diana and Bill Clinton for the downfall of decent reporting, but that seems way to offensive (certainly less so for Clinton).  Ever since OJ, the world has been nuts for gossip.  It certainly happened way before Simpson.  The turn of the century of the 1900’s was the golden age for journalistic exploitation.  Maybe it’s cyclical though, and every one hundred years we are feed garbage for so long and then will come a Sinclair or Thompson to set us straight.

Leave a Reply