I would like to ask a question of all news media, from the
grassroots of this newspaper to the lofty heights of CNN and the
major networks. To paraphrase the great Dickensian line,
”
Please sir, can I have some more?
”
I would like to ask,
”
Please sirs, can I have some less?
”
I would like to ask a question of all news media, from the grassroots of this newspaper to the lofty heights of CNN and the major networks. To paraphrase the great Dickensian line, “Please sir, can I have some more?” I would like to ask, “Please sirs, can I have some less?”
To be more specific, please can I have some less Scott Peterson? In fact, a whole lot less Scott Peterson. I mean, get a grip. The guy is accused (but not yet tried or convicted) of two murders; in the fair city of Oakland alone there were somewhere in the range of 115 murders last year – can you name one alleged perpetrator? One victim? How about San Jose; how many murders do you know anything about? How much total information can you disgorge on the subject of recent Northern California homicides? Bet you’d have trouble constructing three substantive sentences.
But Scott Peterson – about him we know on a near-daily basis everything it is possible for a small army of burrowing reporters to discover, and no detail is too trivial to print or announce. We hear from the prosecutors, we hear from the defense attorneys, we hear from family, from friends, from neighbors, from second cousins of hairdressers’ babysitters. Every scrap of rumor, untested alleged evidence or tantalizing hint gets its time on the news. Why? What makes Scott Peterson a thousand times more newsworthy than any other alleged homicide around?
Or to put it another way, is it really that much more compelling, or are the media trapped on the back of a tiger they chose to ride? The media have made the Peterson case such a major phenomenon that they can’t just drop it back into the sea of criminal cases that get little or no press coverage. Now he’s a star, a public personality, a mini-series, a movie. Now people want to know what he has for breakfast, whether he’s changed his hair style, what his cell looks like. Or do they?
I mean, has anybody been interviewed lately for a poll on how much the public really wants to know about this one case? Are the media sure that a daily diet of Peterson minutiae is what the people are hungering for? Well, in case they’re just winging it, I’d like to speak up for the proposition that they should, like, how can I put this gently so as to not hurt their feelings, STOP IT!
I watch the news on TV; I read the papers. I want to know what’s going on around me; I like to be “informed.” But I am growing irrepressibly irritated at having to put up with a horse-gagging dose of Scott Peterson Today in order to find out stuff that may possibly have some actual importance. If anyone is listening out there, could someone try exercising a little journalistic judgment about the extent to which we all care about a case that for all intents and legitimate purposes has yet to begin?
By the way, this also applies to the Kobe Bryant case, all information about Arnold Schwartzenegger that doesn’t strictly relate to his job and which Democratic candidates ate in which coffee shops, at least in states that are not California. Not to be a stickler about what constitutes newsworthiness, but I actually don’t want to learn that Joe Lieberman had a banana split in New Hampshire today, while John Edwards ate a cheeseburger in North Carolina. I take it as a given that a fundamental qualification for any President of the United States has the ability to eat.
I mean, with all the global events to which we now have instant access, so many of which might even, like, matter, why is it necessary to know so darn much about such stupid stuff? Tip to Microsoft: if you want to make ol’ Bill another few billion, develop a filter that separates real news, like wars and the economy and interplanetary exploration and such, from mere infocrap like the other 85 percent of what the media purveys these days. If you build it, I will come, and I’m guessing I’ll have company.
