A liable verdict in the O. J. Simpson civil suit could mark the beginning of the end of the most-covered story in modern American media. Either way, the end of the civil trial suggests some resolution to the story that has attracted more reporters and more live television, as well as generated more contemplation of different forms of media, than any since the Vietnam War.
But there's nothing like resolution in sight for journalism or the people who depend on it.
The digital age has unleashed an information revolution on our culture and its institutions. Whatever the outcome, this trial won't begin to address the lingering issues the Simpson case has raised for the media, the size, ubiquity, and technologically driven imagery of which have poisoned the criminal justice system and threatened our ability to conduct high-profile inquiries - Simpson, Richard Jewell, Anita Hill, Paula Jones - in anything like a rational or fair-minded way.
The media hype machine has infected legal proceedings like a dread virus. Jurors are locked up like prisoners for months in a vain effort to shield them from reporters and producers, whose messages come pouring in via TV, papers, magazines, modem, cell phone, fax, and radio. Media and the hype that follow have changed the criminal justice system, one of America's democratic crown jewels, in profound ways.
Witnesses call agents before they call the police, and their testimony is sometimes tainted by the tabloid fees they're paid. Defendants work out movie and book deals with their lawyers in lieu of fees. Attorneys preen for cameras and use journalists to get influential messages to juries, judges, and the public. Judges delay court proceedings so they can yak up visiting superstars. Journalists get agents before they call rewrite, signing book and movie deals that tempt them to pump up the stories they're covering and nearly require them to withhold revelatory information for their later hardcovers. So-called "serious" journalists become indistinguishable from their racy tabloid colleagues, sitting side by side.
The many millions of people who turn on their TVs or pick up their papers and magazines in good faith haven't got a chance, never knowing which mega-million-dollar book deal has been signed by what lawyer, reporter, or judge.
The idea that we need and should have access to court proceedings like the Simpson trial is nearly sacred in media, and to a certain extent, in libertarian outposts like the Web. We believe in open government, and in the idea that information wants to and should be free.
Nothing good has ever come out of secret government. And new techno-driven media like Court TV have done much more good than harm, allowing us to witness judicial proceedings firsthand and spreading understanding of and familiarity with constitutional issues and the justice system.
But when mega-stories like the Simpson trial occur, the amount of information surrounding them increasingly seems to overwhelm our most prized but antiquated institutions - like the court system.
Until recently, stories weren't worth money - at least, not for individuals. Even the biggest stories, like the Lindbergh kidnapping, didn't make millionaires out of the subjects.
But in the information age, stories - especially "inside" stories - are precious. Many of the principals in the Simpson case - Johnnie Cochran, Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden - may never have to practice law again. Journalists, attorneys, and other principals have also made enormous amounts of money from revelatory works that tell us much more after the trial than we knew during it, despite the fact that thousands of reporters were camped outside the courtroom every day.
Typically, the press is oblivious to the moral implications of the collision between hype and journalism. Journalists with million-dollar book deals at stake have powerful motives for inflating stories. Or for saving some of their best insights and information for their books, the success of which depends on the degree of sensational new information.
We understand now, mostly through books published about the trial, things we didn't understand during the trial: the prosecution badly bungled the case; reporters thought the police conspiracy theories being advanced by the defense were ludicrous; and hardly anybody expected a conviction from a jury tainted by racial alliances and the porous leakage of prejudicial information.
All this was known to most of the thousands of reporters camped in LA, but not to the rest of us. To get it, we have to shell out US$25 or $30 for books a year after the fact.
Despite the fact that new technology brings us these stories in greater detail than ever before and alters almost every part of the criminal justice process, neither journalism nor the justice system has responded to the new realities of the digital age, when information is literally uncontrollable.
Jury selection seems to depend, for example, on the myth that individuals in our society can be shielded from information, when the fact is that any sane process for choosing jurors should assume they can't, and react accordingly.
Our culture is increasingly being forced to make dreadful and unacceptable choices - between justice and access, for example. Or between a free information marketplace and the corruption of the judicial system.
In the information age, how can we balance interest in keeping the courts open to TV with conducting fair and rational trials? Does the fact that witnesses, prosecutors, defendants, and other principals stand to make millions by inflating or withholding their stories pollute high-profile trials to the point that fair proceedings - a cornerstone of any civilization - are simply no longer possible? Should these payments be curtailed or banned, in the way many states have forbidden violent criminals to benefit financially from the crimes?
Will "serious" journalism ever adopt the sort of ethical standards the press has helped force on institutions like Congress, and require reporters to disclose financial interest in the stories they cover?
A finding of not liable in the Simpson trial might mark the beginning of the end of the biggest story in modern times. But the digital age is just getting underway. It has unleashed an awesome flood of information, much of it driven by pervasive new technologies. And the questions that surround the ways in which these technologies are changing some of our most basic traditions, assumptions, and institutions are not really even being raised.
