
Loose thoughts on OJ and the media circus
“Former football star and convicted felon O.J. Simpson will command the world’s attention once again Thursday when he pleads for his freedom on live TV.” Whether it knows it or not, this lede from an AP article today is packed with two decades of media criticism.
Ah, the trial of the century rears its head once again. And like the obedient pet, media comes running back, with a ball in its mouth. It’s like they never learn.
The TV networks will be live streaming, in addition to cable coverage on ESPN, and I imagine CNN, MSNBC, Fox and Headline News.
Many sites have a “how to watch the parole hearing” article, as well as explainer of how OJ got to this point. As if we don’t already know. Also, thank god there was no Twitter or Facebook or blogging during the trial. The takes would’ve crippled us.
But that’s the interesting thing: we can look at the media’s coverage of the OJ trial as an ancestor to its coverage of the Trump Era. The media scrum surrounding the OJ trial, with its vapid and often ‘for-the-sake-of-TV” coverage led to how the media, with its vapid and often ‘for-the-sake-of-TV coverage, covered Trump.
The OJ trial also cemented the pundit class as a ~thing~. Here’s NPR’s “On the Media” from 2005, both explaining OJ, but also predicting the 2016 campaign:
“The question is why does cable cover stories like this? And of course we know that a huge part of it is that it’s cheap. The panel discussions, the speculation, the experts are cheap, and you can keep them going. You don’t give people a reason to change the channel because you don’t change the subject. And if they’re interested, they’ll hang in there for the next bit of speculation, however ill-informed it may be. … “
From 2016: (source: Andrew Kirell)

The circus plays on.
But so does the audience. It’s kind of like being a DJ at a Top 40 radio station: playing the same songs every hour because that’s what the audience calls in saying they want to hear. Rinse and repeat. We are paying with our eyeballs.
It can’t be a coincidence that the notion of ‘reality TV’ which in 1994 was basically MTV’s The Real World exploded after the OJ case. It sure didn’t hurt that one of OJ’s lawyers was the father of the Kardashian clan. We know how that turned out.
And in 2017, we’re at it again. OJ commanding the stage while at the same time, the president of the United States wages on a war on the media, who have yet to figure out how to cover a celebrity/reality tv president.
Though maybe they’re learning a little bit? Yesterday, the NYT had a 50-minute sit-down with Trump and you can see the gymnastics both sides are trying to execute: reporters trying to land tough questions by stroking Trump’s ego; Trump, well, I don’t think he’s fully aware of what he’s saying.
Anyway, if you want to watch OJ’s parole hearing, it’s on at 1pm.
And when the four-member parole board grants his freedom, which is what the talking heads believe will happen, it’ll give OJ the opportunity, once again, to find Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman’s killers.
