My chair at UWO had this and another newspaper framed on the wall of his office until he retired. Of all the things he’d seen at the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times, this was the topic he looked at on a daily basis.
THE LEAD: O.J. Simpson, a former NFL running back, convicted felon and focal point of a double-murder acquittal, died last week at age 76. In 1995, he was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, but was later found civilly liable for their deaths.
MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 1: I’m not using this post to re-litigate anything related to the trial(s), his subsequent legal issues or the issues related to race, fame, justice or social structure in society. The goal here is to try to place Simpson and those moments into some sort of context for a generation of students for whom Simpson is as timely as the Teapot Dome Scandal and show them why the trial resonates to today.
MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 2: If you think there are additional pieces missing that fit that paradigm I’m using in Caveat Number 1, please feel free to put them in the comments below.
Now… On with the show…
BASIC O.J. BACKGROUND: Simpson was a star NFL running back for the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. He became the first player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season and was inducted into the hall of fame in 1985. His professional life extended beyond football, as he did acting work in television and film, as well as serving as a football broadcaster. Above all else, he was a sought-after celebrity endorser, having done commercials for a variety of products and services, particularly at a time in which people of color did not receive many opportunities in this area. Simpson himself often noted his ability to “transcend race,” as he would say, “I’m not Black. I’m O.J.”
BASIC BACKGROUND ON THE MURDER TRIAL: On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death at Brown Simpson’s condominium. Simpson became the focal point of the investigation. On June 17, Simpson was charged with the killings and was supposed to turn himself in to police, but that didn’t happen. In one of the most famous low-speed car chases in history, Simpson rode in the back seat of a white Ford Bronco as his friend Al Cowlings drove down the freeway, pursued by a dozen squad cars.
The trial spanned 11 months in which the prosecution presented evidence of Simpson’s guilt, including blood found in his car, a bloody glove found near the scene, shoes Simpson was known to wear and more. The “Dream Team” defense often hammered the evidence as being tainted or mishandled. In addition, the defense lawyers presented a significant narrative that both specific racist officers and a racist criminal justice system framed Simpson for this crime, which they stated he did not commit.
On Oct. 3, 1995, the jury returned a not guilty verdict against Simpson in both killings.
THE FRAMES OF O.J.: The media coverage of his cases related to those deaths was among the most intense of anything before or since. The issue was framed in a variety of ways, depending on the media lens used to view it and the underlying personal experiences that shaped people’s lives. Some frames were of a man who beat the justice system due to his fame and personal wealth. Others framed it as an issue of a racist criminal justice system, once again trying to railroad a person of color. Still others framed it as another case in which domestic violence was overshadowed by other frames, demonstrating once again that women were second-class citizens.
WHY SHOULD STUDENTS WHO WEREN’T EVEN BORN AT THAT POINT CARE: In a lot of ways, the Simpson trial was a “you had to be there” thing for a generation of people. It’s the same way that people of my parents’ age talked about the protests of the 1960s and my grandparents’ generation talked about the Great Depression. No matter how much you learn about the topic after the fact, it’s not the same thing. That said, there are key things that this case did that impact current media students to this day:
- Fame as an interest element: Simpson’s fame was obviously a key element to what made this case as big as it was. (As Chris Rock famously said in one of his comedy routines, “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J. He’d be Orenthal the bus-driving murderer.”) That said, the spotlight of the trial shifted people into that “name-recognition lead” zone of media coverage. Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, Mark Fuhrman, Judge Lance Ito, Kato Kaelin, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, Johnnie Cochran and more became household names. (Even 30 years after the trial, those names came to mind immediately for me.) Marcia Clark could cure cancer and Lance Ito could do a country album that knocks Taylor Swift out of the top spot of the charts, but their obituaries will still lead with the O.J. trial. Fame is something we still pay attention to, but what makes someone famous both then (during a pre-digital revolution) and now (in the age of internet stars) is something to consider.
- Real-time broadcast coverage launches the “true crime” obsession: Other cases had allowed cameras and video coverage before, and even a few famous ones had drawn national attention, like the Pamela Smart case. However, just like MySpace and Friendster predated Facebook, these precursors to the Simpson trial couldn’t hold a candle to the overall coverage this received on a day-in, day-out basis. For almost a year, the country was transfixed. If ever there was a “Patient Zero” for court cases as television drama and true crime becoming a prominent form of entertainment, this was it.
- Opinions become news: Broadcasters having an opinion was nothing new, but this case became a benchmark for what we constantly see today when it comes to “big news.” As Alex Weprin noted in the Hollywood Reporter, this trial basically established the formula for journalists using bluster to become famous and media networks using opinionated blather to draw viewers. It’s often easier to give an opinion about something than it is to do research, conduct interviews and rely on facts, which is why we see so much more opinion than we do in-depth journalism. However, as is usually the case, we need to keep our eye on the ball when it comes to providing our audiences valuable content instead of junk food.
- The Race Card: Throughout the trial, the prosecutors accused the defense of “playing The Race Card” to overcome what they saw as obvious factual information. The defense argued that you couldn’t talk about anything in this case without talking about race, particularly in relationship to the racist history of the criminal justice system. Det. Mark Fuhrman’s testimony was particularly on point here, in that he repeatedly denied having any racial animus, only to be confronted with recordings of himself using “the N-word” repeatedly. Coverage of the verdict showed a divided America: White people watching were stunned or enraged at the verdict while Black people were shown celebrating. The analysis of this issue to this day remains a case of how race shaped the overarching views of society and how it still does. Journalists to this day need to understand the underpinnings of social and cultural history as it relates to the people and communities they cover. As much as it’s easy to grab a “Side A” and “Side B” and be done, that’s not going to work in situations where these long-festering wounds exist.
(SIDE NOTE: I remember working on the student newspaper as the city editor when the verdict broke. I mentioned to a friend of mine who is Black that it seemed pretty obvious to me that he did it, in spite of the verdict. He responded, “Well, it was pretty obvious to me that Rodney King got his ass kicked by a bunch of cops, but that didn’t go our way, either.”) - The Ratings Monster: Media outlets have always measured things like circulation, audience share, market share and so forth in an attempt to track how well they are “grabbing eyeballs.” However, the Simpson case was like mainlining adrenaline in terms of how to get people to watch. According to ratings data, more than 150 million people watched the verdict live. To put that in perspective, that’s approximately EIGHT TIMES as many people who watched the Women’s NCAA championship game this year. The problem with getting a high that big is that you spend a lot of time chasing it in all the wrong ways. The question of what is good for our audience and what they are willing to watch/read to help us make our numbers look good has become a divergent one.
DISCUSSION STARTER: Take a look at how the obituaries of O.J. Simpson frame him. In terms of content ordering, where are the various elements of his life mentioned and do you agree with their overall approach? Which ones do you feel do the best job of telling the story in a solid, journalistic fashion and which ones do you think veer too much into opinion and hyperbole? What other issues do you see covered as part of his death and do you see them as being more or less relevant than they might have been at the time of his murder trial?