THE STARS HAVE ALIGNED TO SELL PAPERS But tabloids aren't alone in headlining high-profile scandalous stories
By Peter Johnson
USA TODAY
In the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart told his soon-to-be ex-love Ingrid Bergman that ''the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.''
But today, in this crazy world, the problems of a few people not only amount to a hill of beans, they have the whole country fascinated.
''You keep hearing it over and over: People like to watch a train wreck,'' says CBS 60 Minutes II producer Jeff Fager.
Terrorists are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and bombing embassies in Turkey. President Bush is under fire for going to war, particularly from nine Democrats who want his job. The economy remains a big question mark as the 2004 election nears.
Yet for millions of Americans, all these stories take a back seat to Scott Peterson, a California fertilizer salesman charged with murdering his young, pregnant wife; NBA star Kobe Bryant, charged with sexually assaulting a young woman; and now Michael Jackson, the world's best-selling pop star, who is charged with child molestation.
These three sagas are manna from heaven for celebrity print and TV outfits, from Us and Star magazines to Access Hollywood and Larry King Live.
Dramatic stories with intrigue always draw, but when there's news on several high-profile cases at once, it's as if the moon and the stars are aligned in some sensational orbit.
Don't blame the supermarket tabloids for piling on: Mainstream media are vigorously reporting these stories, too, as are network morning shows and newsmagazines.
But Jackson's case has been a particular bonanza for cable news, which has hours of airtime to fill. Cable has devoted plenty of airtime rehashing details of Jackson's arrest, even though no new details have emerged since Thursday.
Anyone with any connection, however remote, is being tapped, from sister LaToya's ex-husband to suddenly omnipresent brother Jermaine to the court reporter who witnessed Jackson's deposition in his 1993 molestation case.
Promos for Tuesday's Dateline NBC and tonight's Larry King Live promise to bring viewers ''the latest'' developments on the Jackson case.
It's highly reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson case, in which cable TV hosts talked nightly about his murder trial, whether there was news or not. Viewers ate it up, which was why cable news executives ordered their hosts to keep talking about Simpson. And when they didn't, ratings fell.
Producers argue that with Simpson, and now Jackson, they are simply responding to an ever-increasing public thirst. Practicing good journalism is always their intent, they say, but media companies are in the business of making money. If people want it, so be it.
Still, some critics say that ever since Simpson, the media have foisted more salacious tabloid stories on Americans, driven mostly by a desire to increase profits. They note that none of these cases has much bearing on the future of the world, unlike, say, the war in Iraq. As such, they question the value of such intense media coverage.
''Replacing hard news with pop culture fits both the attention span of many, plus it doesn't offend the White House or advertisers,'' says University of Missouri journalism professor Tom McPhail. ''The 'Vast Wasteland' is at hand.''
Maybe. Maybe not.
Fager says 60 II won't be doing weekly pieces on any of these cases but predicts many competitors will. But he also says he wouldn't turn down an interview with Jackson. And he's trying to figure out how he can update a past 60 II interview that Charlie Rose did with Bryant, before Bryant was charged.
Coverage of Jackson, Peterson and Bryant isn't bumping other news: CNN isn't ignoring the upcoming election or Iraq or Turkey, nor are any of the three network nightly newscasts. They all led with the latest bombings in Turkey on Thursday, the day of Jackson's arrest.
Newsweek's cover story this week is about the final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Time's is devoted to President Bush.
''Michael Jackson fits into that category of tabloid scandal -- Rush Limbaugh and Kobe Bryant come to mind -- that don't make sense for me to put on the cover,'' Time managing editor Jim Kelly says. ''We do stories on these subjects, of course, but in a time of war, readers of Time look to us for more substantive fare on the cover.''
But at Us, things are different. Editor Janice Min says that in an increasingly complicated world, ''people want to grab onto a news story that is tangible and easy to follow. It's hard to sit down and get engaged in a plotline about Iraq or the economy.''
Min says people love a story that can be personalized, which is why the saga of Pfc. Jessica Lynch resonated so forcefully with Americans.
But even Min was surprised last week when she herself was featured on NBC's Today in its 7:30 a.m. half-hour -- traditionally hard-news turf -- to talk about Us' interview with another recent pop-culture sensation, Paris Hilton, and her videotaped sex romp.
Then again, this is a network sweeps month, when advertising rates are set by how well shows such as Today perform. And as everyone knows, sex, like crime, sells.
Says Min: ''It has crossed my mind more than once in the past week: 'Poor Wesley Clark or Howard Dean; they can't get anyone to listen to them.' For people trying to stay on traditional news stories, I would imagine it is frustrating.''
Min's predecessor at Us, Bonnie Fuller, now at Star, isn't sure that the Jackson case has ''legs'' to continue to draw readers. But interest in other people's problems, especially rich celebrities, ''can make you feel better about your life. 'God, my life is not that complicated and that difficult.' ''
Court TV president Art Bell says the public has always been fascinated by whodunits.
Mix advances in crime forensics with hundreds of niche cable channels such as Court TV-- all with airtime to fill -- and the programming possibilities are endless.
Before the advent of all these cable channels, Peterson's case might ''have been a great local story, and it might have shown up on one of the network magazine shows,'' Bell says. Now, thanks to cable TV, everyone knows Peterson's name. ''There is going to be much more national and international attention to some of these local cases.''
Provocative celebrity cases often provide a platform for lawyers to shift from the courtroom to the newsroom. ABC's Star Jones, a former prosecutor, got her start in network news when NBC hired her to analyze the Palm Beach rape trial of William Kennedy Smith.
Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, a lawyer, made her bones in TV covering the Simpson trial and other legal proceedings for CNN until Fox News lured her away for her own show. Now her program, On the Record, is prime stomping ground for other wannabe lawyers-turned-TV-stars.
Throughout the Simpson ordeal, Jeffrey Toobin, a Harvard lawyer and writer for The New Yorker, provided legal commentary for ABC News. Last year, he joined CNN and is now seen daily, talking about every aspect of the Bryant, Peterson and Jackson cases.
Lawyer Mark Geragos was a talking head on the Peterson case until he was tapped to represent Peterson and now Jackson.
Shelley Ross, executive producer of ABC's Good Morning America, calls media interest in Peterson, Bryant and Jackson ''a fluke confluence. Media people throw around the term 'media frenzy' all the time, but I just think we're in the information age, and there are a lot more of us out there.''
And Ross says that just because mainstream media are following these cases closely does not mean they are in danger of losing their journalistic credibility. ''We can have very sober reporting, worthy of network standards and practices, and worthy of the ABC News banner.''
Others are less sanguine.
Thursday, University of Mississippi magazine professor Samir Husni went home for lunch and turned on CNN, thinking he'd catch up on the news of the day.
But for 45 minutes, the only news on CNN (and Fox and MSNBC) was the impending landing of Michael Jackson's jet in Santa Barbara, Calif.
''I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would tell students that covering an arrest is more important than car bombs in Turkey or a presidential visit to London,'' says Husni of two events that also happened Thursday. ''But try them out on the cover of a magazine and see which one sells.''
In these cost-conscious times, having someone talk on air about Jackson is far less expensive to produce than, say, sending a correspondent and crew to Iraq, says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
After years of having large doses of reporting on the rich and famous, Rosenstiel says, ''people are now interested in it. It shows the agenda-setting power of the media. If networks had more foreign news bureaus, we'd be more interested in foreign news. There's a self-fulfilling quality to it.''
Rosenstiel predicts that should the moon and stars align themselves some day -- with breaking dish on Jackson, Peterson and Bryant -- hard news won't amount to a hill of beans.
''The White House correspondents and everyone else in the Washington bureaus can go out to lunch and have a couple of martinis.''
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