By Corey Pein
It’s a perennial scene: media folk roll into town like Hell’s Angels, chasing a celebrity trial and trampling the courthouse lawn. But with their coffers wearing thin along with their patience, local governments are learning how to manage the media swarm. Along with a mostly compliant press, they’re setting precedents that could affect coverage of big trials for years to come.
Officials in Santa Barbara County, home to Michael Jackson’s molestation trial, have asked the media to pay 15 percent of the expected trial costs — some $7,500 a day. This “impact fee” supposedly covers extra services provided to the media, although the county isn’t providing much beyond a closed-circuit viewing room and garbage pickup. The biggest expense is security. Dozens of deputies frisk reporters for weapons, guard the TV trucks, and keep the photographers — along with hundreds of Jacko fans — in line.
“We’re not making any money here,” says Bob Nisbet, the official who tallied the county’s costs. As of September, the county had spent $600,000, while a consortium of news organizations had “contributed” $85,000 — and the actual trial isn’t scheduled to begin until January. Nearly everyone observing the trial, except the county, finds the daily fee seems excessive, and says the press can handle its own security.
So why did the press agree to pay? Well, not everyone did. The deal was brokered by two people who wouldn’t talk on the record — Steve Loeper, the senior administrative editor of The Associated Press’s Los Angeles bureau, and Nina Zacuto, an NBC producer. And reporters who arrived after the deal was struck were asked to play by the consortium’s rules. It works like this: The national press gets billed by a private “pool coordinator,” also hired by the consortium. No breakdown of the county’s fee appears on the invoice. Broadcast pays 70 percent of the bill, print pays 30 percent, and local outlets pay nothing. Print outlets would pay about $8,000 over the course of the trial, which is expected to last four months. For some papers, that’s a lot of money. And for others, there’s the principle of the thing. Michelle Caruso of the New York Daily News wasn’t privy to the negotiations, and has yet to pay up. She says she would have asked a higher court’s opinion on the fees before agreeing to anything. “What we’ve done now is set a precedent.”
In fact, the precedent is hardening. Judges and officials in Santa Barbara County coordinated media strategy with their counterparts at the Scott Peterson murder trial and the Kobe Bryant rape trial. As with any other profession, court flacks and county sheriffs compare notes.
Is the press paying for courtroom access? Officials insist that seating is unrelated to payment, but some reporters at the Jackson trial paid out of fear that they would lose their seats. T.R. Reid, who covered the Bryant trial for The Washington Post, says reporters could get a seat there only after paying to join the “Colorado Consortium.” Eve Burton, Hearst Corporation’s legal counsel, points out that paying for access is unconstitutional. “We had a revolution with Britain because we wanted to have open criminal trials.” Of course, the founding fathers never had to deal with a parking lot full of satellite trucks.
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