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October 4, 2005
O.J. Simpson trial birth of reality TV
By BILL BRIOUX, Toronto Sun

Ten years ago yesterday, an estimated 150 million television viewers heard two words that shattered the illusion of racial harmony in North America: "Not guilty."

Former NFL star O.J. Simpson was accused of brutally murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The verdict of that trial might rank as the most-watched moment in North American television history. Stock market activity slowed. Long distance phone transactions dropped.

So did a lot of jaws. PBS' Frontline revisits the event tonight at 9 The O.J. Verdict.

The engrossing, hour-long documentary, from producer Ofra Bikel, revisits the scene of the crime, starting in 1994 with that riveting white Bronco chase, quite possibly the birth of reality television.

At trial there are plenty of clips of O.J.'s legal "Dream Team" in action, led by the one and only Johnnie Cochran, who died in March. Interviews with surviving defence attorneys F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz figure prominently. Missing are perspectives from the major players of the prosecuting team, including Marcia Clark, with deputy prosecutor William Hodgeman stuck telling the DA's side.

Remember Faye Resnick, Kato Kalen and Denise Brown? So sought-after by Geraldo, CNN and other media outlets at the time, they're like last year's Survivor contestants now, cast away.

Also missing is Simpson himself, but The Juice, who is probably slicing on some golf course today, isn't really the story here anyway.

As Jeffrey Toobin, who covered the trial for The New Yorker, states: "The only reason that we will care about O.J. Simpson 10 years after, 20 years after, is what it told us about race in this country."

Among the things it told us was the divisions between white and black North Americans run far deeper than many had comfortably come to believe.

The reaction of both races to the verdict exposed the racial divide for what it is: Vast and unreconciled. Whites are shown reacting in shock and disbelief. Blacks with joy and elation.

Dershowitz says the verdict was taken personally by whites across America. The letters he received in the wake of the trial were "unbelievable," filled with anger and hatred. This was "the worst verdict in American history," they said.

Blacks, particularly those that had personally felt singled out by the Los Angeles police department, were elated. "We finally won one," is how one long-suffering observer put it.

RACIAL DIVISIONS

The O.J. Verdict isn't totally focused on racial divisions. Bikel makes a few points about the sea change in TV journalism. Ted Koppel gives credit to the National Enquirer for beating the New York Times, his own network, and other established media outlets to scoop after scoop.

"One of the great ironies of the trial was that the National Enquirer reminded us what good basic journalism is about, which is shoeleather," says Koppel.

What's left unsaid and unexplored is the fallout from that tabloid triumph and how it shifted standards and focus in today's mainstream TV news reporting.

It must also be remembered the O.J. trial was on all day, every day, for more than a year. There were no lame Michael Jackson-style trial re-enactments because they weren't necessary. Nothing on daytime TV was half as good as the drama unfolding in Judge Ito's wide open courtroom.

CELEBRITY TRIALS

The Simpson verdict also created the cynical expectation future celebrity trials would end in acquittal. Jackson's and Robert Blake's recent trials seemed boring and anticlimactic by comparison.

The documentary also reminds us this was a trial of huge mistakes, both by the LAPD (broadly accused of trying to "frame a guilty man") and by the prosecution team, which wasted too much time shredding Simpson's all-American reputation while relying on tainted evidence and dubious witnesses such as racist cop Mark Fuhrman.

The O.J. Verdict is mainly about "the race card" (a term coined during the trial). It is played with finesse toward the end of the hour in an illuminating scene in a black barber shop.

"He got the same breaks a rich white man would get" is one patron's judgment. It is hard to argue with that.