Like Watching a Train Wreck

On Thursday morning, I turned on my satellite TV to surf 24-hour news programs, as I worked on the computer on various projects. To my horror, Fox News had gone to continuous coverage of the train wreck known as the Anna Nicole Smith body custody trial. As a lawyer, I watched a few minutes of it. It was horrible, but fascinatingly, it kept getting worse and worse as it went along.

It was like reading a truly dreadful book or watching a dreadful movie that you know is rotten. But you keep reading or watching to see if it can get even worse. And this one did.

I won’t comment on the legal aspects of this case. I agree with many other commentators who said the case should have been decided on an obvious point, in a hearing lasting perhaps 20 minutes, tops.

I have to make a few comments about Judge Larry Seidlin. I’ve dealt with hundreds of judges, at every level from District Court (lowest level “police” court in Baltimore) to the US Supreme Court. I’ve seen judges who were characters, or fancied themselves as comedians. But, I’ve never before seen the likes of Judge Seidlin.

Early in his career he was a cab driver in the Bronx. I conclude that you can take the cab driver out of the Bronx, but you can’t take the Bronx out of the cab driver.

A local, legal website in Broward County says that this judge is a victim of his own “inner comedian.” I can believe it. He rambled. He repeated himself. He talked at length arriving at no known point. There are people who have microphone syndrome. Confronted with a microphone, they fall in love with the sound of their own voices, and start talking interminably about essentially nothing.

Judge Seidlin also committed reversible errors by the bushel, in my opinion. Most of the testimony that he took in this case was inadmissible and irrelevant to the one real issue presented. The best analogy to how he “ran” his courtroom was a classic Superbowl commercial which began with cowboys ridin’ and whompin’. As the shot widened, you realized they were herding cats. The cats were running every which way and on top of each other, like the gaggle of lawyers in Seidlin’s courtroom.

Consider the judgments the editors at Fox News, and all other news agencies, made as they decided to go wall to wall (or nearly that) with that story. As Michelle said to me, this was driven by the fact that many/most men go gaga over blond hair and large boobs on a woman, even if neither the hair color nor the boobs are real.

Couple that with the fact that this unfortunate woman wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when she was sober – and when she was high on booze, drugs, whatever, she became as dumb as a hoe handle. The last pathetic aspect as that everyone in that courtroom was trying to stay on the financial gravy train created by Ms. Smith – never mind that she was now dead.

If anyone in that courtroom turns out to have been both honest and capable, I will cheerfully apologize to that exception to the rule.

Until then, I condemn the participants in this pathetic circus, and I condemn the American audiences who watched this empty farce. The “news” media are not in the business of providing the most important information in clear fashion. Their job is to “attract eyeballs.” The more people who are watching whatever drivel is on the screen, the more money advertisers will pay for their spots.

The dumbing down of what is called news started in 1977, when ABC News put Roone Arledge, then in charge of its Sports Division, in charge of its News Division. The network was, unfortunately, correct in its judgment. News is really entertainment, except with unpaid actors and unpaid scripts.

The continuing coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, never mind that she’d dead, is scraping the bottom of that particular barrel.

About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu

The “news” media are not in the business of providing the most important information in clear fashion. Their job is to “attract eyeballs.” The more people who are watching whatever drivel is on the screen, the more money advertisers will pay for their spots.

I have been musing over an exchange I had with a liberal, who on learning I wasn't in his fraternity said in a condescending way, "You probably thing journalism isn't objective." My response was laughter, to think that anyone would suppose they could put me on the defensive about journalism. In the event, I was dissatisfied with the way I approached discussing it after he said that laughter wasn't an argument.
And it occurred to me today that I should have apologized for laughing at his religion. That would have gotten his attention and made him interested in my challenge: if his belief in the objectivity of journalism were based on something other than faith, he would be able to show that journalism tells "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Since nobody even knows the whole truth, and nobody tells everything that they know, it's impossible to prove that journalism does not have a self-interested tendency.
And of course, as you say, it does have a self-interested tendency - journalism has the imperative to entertain. More generally, the one thing journalists want you to take away from their stories is that journalism is important. And although as you suggest, they want the audience to tune in to their particular show, it is noteworthy that journalists adhere to a go-along-and-get-along ethic - no journalist will criticize another journalist, and all journalists uphold the conceit that all journalists are objective. Which ultimately means that there is no substantive competition among journalists - that although we have many journalism outlets we actually have only one journalism.
And liberals hold that that one journalism is the font of all wisdom and the very embodiment of the public interest. Otherwise why accept that the rules for profitable journalism - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "Always make your deadline" - ineluctably lead journalism to produce objectivity?

The dumbing down of what is called news started in 1977, when ABC News put Roone Arledge, then in charge of its Sports Division, in charge of its News Division. The network was, unfortunately, correct in its judgment. News is really entertainment, except with unpaid actors and unpaid scripts.

I realized years ago that 'news' is a church full of pregnant girl scouts getting struck by lightning on the Fourth of July.

I don't accept that journalism was more objective without the explicit recognition of its entertainment imperative. In fact, it would be far less tendentious if it was open and candid about its entertainment imperative. After all, that is exactly what the Rush Limbaugh show is - journalism which is candid about its political perspective and about its intention to be entertaining so as to attract a large audience and be able to "charge confiscatory advertising rates."
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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