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Survey Says: O.J.'s Media Legacy?

On the tenth anniversary of the low-speed police chase, what do mb readers think is the lasting legacy of all the O.J.-trial press coverage?

It's been 10 years and one week since O.J. Simpson led the LAPD—and millions of television viewers—on his famous low-speed chase. That night set off one of the largest media circuses in recent memory: The seemingly never-ending saga of the investigation, the press conferences, the criminal trial, its verdict, the civil trial, and that second verdict. Last week, on the 10th anniversary of the chase, we asked mediabistro.com readers about the media legacy of the O.J. Simpson coverage. Here are the results.

One thing was clear: Nearly no one thought the O.J. trial was truly the "trial of the century," entirely its own thing. Rather, readers were divided over how the 1994 coverage affected media treatment of similar, subsequent events.

Thirty percent of respondents felt that the trial's primary legacy was creating the precedent of wall-to-wall coverage for all sorts of major trials. "It was the perfect storm of media meltdowns and all because of one number: 95 million," wrote one voter in this category. "That's how many people watched the chase. And every TV exec out there drooled uncontrollably at the thought of popping that big a number." "It led the media down the road of hyping every big celebrity trial," noted another, "when such cases are nothing more than one of many cogs in the wheel of justice." Yet another noted that while ignoring important stories in favor of more salacious ones was nothing new for the media, "what was precedent-setting was the complete, moment-by-moment, ad nauseum coverage of the case." All of which, commented someone else, "was a bad precedent, at that."

In fact, 47 percent of respondents believe that the O.J. coverage ultimately led the media to ignore other important stories in favor of chasing the next mega-trial. "Important stories are dismissed or covered lightly," noted one respondent in this camp. "O.J. grabbed more attention than the Khobar Towers incident, Rabin's assassination, and many other important stories of the time. Media make the story—if they'd spent more time focusing on terrorism, people would have been more aware of the growing threat." Or, as another put it more succinctly: "It created an audience of people who believe if it's on TV it's news, and a generation of reporters who'd rather gossip than report."

Ouch.

Be sure to vote in this week's new poll, asking how much Reagan coverage is too much.