1996
may go down as the year when the gathering energies of the new century finally reached
unstoppable momentum, leaving no embraceable verities in its wake other than
the assurance that nothing will ever be as it was. Like stage managers in the
midst of a hurricane, the news media acted the part of victims more often than
presenters as the shadows of 1996 played out across screens and pages
throughout the land. The ugly blowback from the Simpson criminal trial in 1995
fed into the futility of the 1996 election coverage, tossing up a spectacle of
appalling dimension. The most elaborate communications apparatus in history, it
seemed, could make little sense of what was happening in our common time and
place, or even relate the key events with much clarity.
The Simpson trial and its aftermath revealed a society broken into opposing
tribes, each wedded to separate realities and attended to by a justice system
plagued by advanced dysfunction. (A sequel of sorts occurred this year when the
San Jose Mercury-News‘ expose of drug-running CIA goons was misread as
evidence of a sinister white cabal dedicated to the destruction of black
people.)
The election was, if anything, even more alarming, a performance of a
tradition hollowed out from the inside. It had the flavor of a ritual fallen
into stasis: the money changing hands, the mock battles over ideology, the
predictable outcome.
The news media turned both events into feasts of minutiae, apparently hellbent
on offering irrefutable proof of their own irrelevance. Following the coverage
day by day meant coping with the dawning suspicion that the more information
you absorbed, the stupider you became. For me, the definitive moment of the
year was the sight of a media swarm 15,000 strong hovering around the hall in
San Diego before the convention, with nothing to do but take pictures of each
other. Others may cite David Brinkley’s unguarded moment at the end of election
night, or the shark fiesta that followed the Atlanta bombing. A dozen, or a
hundred, other examples could be compiled without going to a lot of trouble.
All of them show a communications state groaning beneath its own weight and
writhing within the conflict between its historic function and its new affinity
for decadent pageantry.
Meanwhile, the owners of the media formed powerful new alliances at a time
when common sense suggests the news monopolies should be broken into many
discrete pieces by vigorous antitrust enforcement. And citizens belonging to
the more or less educated classes acquired the habit of end-running the media
behemoths via electronic mail networks where they speak directly to one
another, reprising the oral tradition of the now-vanished public space, over
huge distances. The networks are vast, chaotic, and growing like kudzu. Some
claimed the new networks were a revolutionary force for good; others disagreed.
“Millions more every year dive into their personal electronic screens and swim
like eager minnows through the shapeless sea of information as if the ability
to swim were in itself a victory or a power,” writes Canadian philosopher John
Ralston Saul. “The traditional idea that some sort of freedom and control over
those in power can be achieved by reverting to simple oral language,” he goes
on, “simply doesn’t work when modern communications systems are drowning us in
an oral language which has no practical relationship to power.”
The media combines do have a practical relationship to power, and only time
will tell whether the explosion of uncontrolled information will make the
ground shift violently under their feet or merely harass them like mosquitoes
at a picnic. Naturally they will try to seize control of the digital arena
themselves, and if we are lucky, that may be an impossible goal. Without a
doubt, the next few years will be see an interesting saga, and like the rulers
of the British Empire or the owners of latifundias in the late Roman
era, the moguls will assuredly make comical mistakes and run afoul of their own
hubris. While the birth of the new century’s media beast will not be pretty, it
promises a dizzying ride for all, and subversive opportunities for those
willing to take them.
Newspapers and metro TV news outlets will have to reinvent themselves, and
soon, or else they will die. Indifference is the weapon that will do the job,
for by all accounts everyone born after about 1968 has little or no interest in
reading and viewing those mainstays of the media marketplace. And recreating
newspapers and local news online is not the answer, nor even all that
necessary. There’s nothing wrong with the current delivery formats: Starting
the day flipping through a newspaper beats staring at a computer hands down,
and it makes sense to look at a little local news while dinner is on the
stove.
Yet, “reinvent” is not a strong enough word; perhaps “dismantle and rebuild
from scratch” is closer to the mark. A perfect little example arrived early
last December, thanks to an act of insane violence on the part of a young woman
whose marriage had gone bad. Martha Hernandez, 25, hired three teenagers to
kill her husband, Roberto Giral, which one of them duly accomplished on
December 3 while Hernandez and Giral were walking in Zilker Park. The three
youths fled in Hernandez’s car, and she called the police, telling them her
husband had been shot by robbers. The story fell apart as police interviewed
witnesses, and when one of the teenagers came forward, Hernandez’s arrest for
her husband’s murder became an inevitability.
KVUE-24 did not cover the story, in keeping with their criteria for crime
stories. No continuing threat to public safety or children was involved; Zilker
Park had not suddenly become the OK Corral; therefore it did not rate a piece.
As usual, this drove competitor K-EYE-42 nuts, because once again they looked
sleazy for giving the story prominent play in their genteel version of standard
tabloid TV news. It just must hurt when your competition takes the high road
and whips you in the ratings: Neal Spelce even wrote a letter to the
American-Statesman upbraiding KVUE for ignoring such an important local
crime story, prompting a volley of letters in reply. Because his letter ran
before the facts of the case were reported in the newspaper, he looked rather
silly when it emerged that the brazen armed robbery was actually a setup. (The
Statesman, by the way, did a decent job reporting the story, though
front page placement was a bit excessive.)
Desperate people killing each other: On the surface the story would seem to
merit little attention beyond just-the-facts. Or maybe they all missed out, not
just K-EYE with its tiny tempest but the newspaper, too. “If cultural
anthropologists could write, a lot of journalists would have to find other
work,” Jon Katz wrote in a Wired article on the Simpson case. I think
he’s right. Imagine what a trained mind could do with the Martha Hernandez
story, using cameras or prose. Hiring people to kill other people was unheard
of outside Mafia chronicles as little as 15 years ago. Somehow the practice
migrated from pop culture narrative into actual practice, and I can’t be the
only person who finds this fascinating as well as sordid. Truman Capote proved
three decades ago that simple crime stories can open up a whole world. The
basic need for straight factual stories obscures the many qualities they lack.
Often as not, they leave real life in the shadows.
This article appears in January 3 • 1997 and January 3 • 1997 (Cover).