Bashing The Media p. 10

By: M.L. STEIN

ROBERT SHAPIRO, WHO co-led the victorious legal team in the O.J. Simpson trial, proved himself an equal-opportunity media basher in an address to Los Angeles journalists.
In the course of unloading his grievances over the coverage of the trial, he managed to punch out the "cash-for-trash tabloids," New Yorker magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and almost every other broadcast and print medium that reported the event.
There was even a swipe at the New York Times for a post-O.J. headline that Shapiro said distorted his appearance as a witness in a Florida lawsuit involving F. Lee Bailey, another Simpson defense lawyer.
Shapiro was the keynote speaker at the recent 20th annual awards dinner of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Seated at the main table with him was Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Newton, one of the honorees for his trial coverage, and Associated Press special correspondent Linda Deutsch, another trial veteran and dinner emcee.
Also receiving an award was NBC anchor/reporter Jim Giggans and State Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) for his efforts on behalf of freedom of information.
"O.J. may not have been the trial of the century, but it certainly was the media event of the century," said Shapiro. "Everybody wanted the story and they wanted it first."
The lawyer, who has represented a number of celebrity clients ? porn star Linda Lovelace and Christian Brando among them ? complained of being besieged by a pack of reporters each time he entered the courtroom.
"Every day they would say, 'Gimme me a bite, gimme me a bite ? anything,' " Shapiro recalled. "I felt horrible to see distinguished people standing in front of the courtroom, yelling questions, telling me, 'My editor is on me. My producer is on me. I need two stories today and I need them now.' "
Shapiro acknowledged that reporters were under "tremendous pressure," during the trial but he asked: "What could newspapers report that couldn't be seen live on television or heard on the news?"
The high-profile attorney accused the media of "breaking the rules of ethics and casting professionalism to the wind."
Using coverage of Lovelace and Brando cases for comparison, Shapiro said reporters covering those trials had "some semblance of calmness, some semblance of demeanor, a semblance that the world wasn't going to end that day if they didn't have the best story, the first story, the untold story."
Shapiro also charged that many of the media personnel at the Simpson trial knew little or nothing about the justice system.
"I was astounded," he said, "to find out there were people there who didn't know what a grand jury indictment was, or the difference between a pretrial and a preliminary hearing ? reporters who didn't know that defense attorneys are not allowed in the grand jury room."
Shapiro also blasted the media as being "pro-prosecution."
"Too many of you forgot the presumption of innocence and replaced it with the presumption of guilt," he chided.
The media were not the only targets of Shapiro's barbs. He blasted the lawyer-commentators on TV as "Monday morning quarterbacks ? law professors, who became experts on trial law without ever having been in a courtroom."
But he was soon back to the media, singling out various publications. Shapiro revealed for the first time in public that he was the source of the New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin, who cited a defense source as saying that part of the Simpson defense would focus on Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman allegedly planting Simpson's glove in the suspect's back yard.
According to Shapiro, Toobin, a lawyer, broke an off-the-record agreement of their conversation. Fuhrman's credibility and the glove were key issues in the trial.
Newsweek, he added, carried a similar account, although "not quite as egregious."
The New Yorker stood by Toobin's July 25, 1995, article. A spokeswoman for the weekly magazine said the account was "accurate in all respects and did not violate any agreement with any of Mr. Toobin's sources."
Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Boyarsky also came under fire for allegedly similar violation ? but it involved a meeting with Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the Simpson trial.
Although not mentioning Boyarsky by name, it was clear to the audience who Shapiro meant when he said that a "Los Angeles Times columnist" wrote about a private meeting with Ito that was supposed to have been off the record. "I didn't know journalists could waive a privilege as sacred as this," Shapiro commented sarcastically.
Boyarsky, a veteran journalist who turned out a daily column on the media during the trial, denied Shapiro's assertion in an interview with E&P.
He said Ito invited him into his chambers, where "we talked about nothing important. I did not betray any trust. I did not describe our conversation."
Boyarsky said the entire press corp knew about his session with Ito and, "Since I was writing about the media and a horde of reporters were waiting for me with questions when I came out, I felt I should at least write about the meeting."
In the column, Boyarsky noted that his chat with Ito was off the record, and for that reason he was not disclosing the content of their talk.
Boyarsky devoted part of the piece to desribing Ito's cluttered office and mentioned that a 5.8 earthquake struck during their chat, leaving both of them unfazed.
Times editor Shelby Coffey III said Shapiro's jab at Boyarsky did not represent a "fair reading" of the column.
In his talk, Shapiro predicted that the media's behavior at the Simpson trial would change the relationship between lawyers and the press.
"Those of us who have worked with and trusted the media are going to be a little less open, a little more reluctant and restrained in our contacts with the press," he said. "This is something I have never wanted to do, but as we examine the experience we've been through, we see there are ways it could have been done better. Do we have to be so sensational?"
Shapiro's remarks came at a time when media interest in O.J. Simpson is heating up again as his civil trial nears. The Los Angeles Times broke a front page exclusive on the content of the transcript of Simpson's deposition the paper said it had "obtained." Other media quickly jumped on the story.
Simpson himself has contributed to the revived media coverage by giving interviews to the Times, CNN, a radio station, and making other public statements, as well as pitching his $29.95 video asserting his innocence of the double murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, for which he was acquitted.
Reaction to Shapiro's address was mixed among the media attendees at the awards dinner.
"I'm sure many mistakes were made by the media during the trial, but with so many outlets covering it, I would say, overall, that we did a very good job," said Times metro editor Leo Wolinsky. "His criticism was much too harsh. The Times and the mainstream press handled the story professionally, but the tabloids did some pretty unprofessional things."
Jim Box, executive editor of Copley Los Angeles Newspapers, observed: "I think there is enough criticism to go around for everybody. Because we were a media crowd, we were the subjects tonight. I hope when he speaks to lawyers and law students, he gets into ethics and professionalism. There clearly were a lot of excesses and attempts at media manipulation by both legal teams."
Box suggested that the mainstream press may have earned the "sensationalist" criticism by quoting from the tabloids "to the extent that the Enquirer was generally acknowledged as an authentic source of information."
"Actually, the tabloid's sources ? although they were probably paid ? turned out to be fairly accurate," Box added. "They were very aggressive in covering the case. On the whole, there were many highs in general coverage, but I'm afraid there were many more lows."
City News Service President Douglas Faigin said: "It's always been fashionable to blame the media, and it will continue to be fashionable. The real danger in the speech is that it tells the media it's OK to restrict themselves and convinces the public to act against their own best interests by curbing the media."