Laci Peterson Save Cable News Ratings

Thank goodness Laci Peterson and her baby washed up on the shore of San Pablo Bay. Now we can keep the rubes glued to their tubes. Ratings for cable television were beginning to decline. Pictures of Saddam Hussein statues coming down were getting somewhat repetitive and the news consuming public had grown weary of listening to experts predicting failure in Iraq. Besides, those guys have developed a bit of a credibility problem. And so far, the SARS epidemic has not really made for riveting news, unless you were planning a business trip to China or Toronto. Who knows what cable news and news magazines would have seized upon to keep ratings up, had not the Laci Peterson case conveniently re-emerged.
But now the talk shows have something new to focus their attention upon. Newly empanelled banks of experts can be seated and squeezed dry for every drop of speculation. The viewing public can become acquainted with a fresh set of anguished faces.
How do such things become such big news? Is it really news or is it entertainment? Does the news media consider itself in competition with reality shows like “Survivor” or “Big Brother?” Or, are they competing with “All My Children?”
Fox News Bill O’Reilly took a stab at this the other day – but missed. Journalists, and in particular, news broadcasters, frequently succumb to their need to indulge themselves in occasional moral exhibitionism. This is frequently accomplished by demonstrating sensitivity to the disparate treatment society gives to people from different socioeconomic groups. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly achieves this purpose by pointing out how the news media report on similar crimes affecting different social strata. Last year Bill O’Reilly found an African-American couple whose child had vanished without a trace, and whom few people had ever heard of. He compared the treatment of their lost little girl to that of Elizabeth Smart, who was from a wealthy white family.
Because moral exhibition requires demonstrating how high above the rabble the exhibitionist is, Bill O’Reilly proclaimed that the only reason that the media treated the two cases differently was the race and socioeconomic circumstances the two girls grew up in.
More recently, he compared the disappearance and the ultimate discovery of the remains of a lower class Hispanic woman to the Laci Peterson case. Like Laci Peterson, she was carrying a nearly full term baby. Like Laci Peterson, she disappeared with few clues. And her body washed up on shore, just a couple of miles from where Laci Peterson’s remains were discovered.
Relatively few people have ever heard of this other case, whereas Laci Peterson has found her way to the front page for the second time. To the surprise of no one who has grown sensitive to moral exhibitionism, Bill O’Reilly blamed socioeconomic status for the very different treatment of the two very similar cases.
But there are other reasons for disparate treatment. It has to do with the ebb and flow of news itself. Christmas Eve, when Laci Peterson vanished, is a reliably slow news day. News hungry reporters will seize upon anything that happens on such days. It’s very likely that a pretty, white, middle class woman somewhere disappeared during the three-week war against Iraq. And you’ve never heard of her and probably never will, because cable news and news magazines were already operating at saturation level.
Elizabeth Smart vanished just as news was entering its summer dead zone. Little that is newsworthy goes on during the summer. The summer before Elizabeth Smart served to keep Time and Newsweek’s sales and advertising revenues up, the media seized upon shark attacks, even though three times as many people died from being struck on the head by coconuts falling from palm trees. All last summer, the news media focused upon the wave of child kidnappings, even though statistically 2002 was the lowest on record for such crimes.
Unless we go to war with North Korea, or terrorists manage another mega-attack, we’ll be entering the traditional summer slow news season in few more weeks. Correspondents will not be breaking into regular programming to report on the establishment of a new Iraqi bureaucracy. We’ve used up missing girls and sharks. And I don’t expect to be hearing from any coconut experts. I dread to think what they’ll come up with next.