Sniper Coverage: How Big to Play It?   

Journalists debate the appropriateness of non-stop sniper coverage

BILL O'REILLY: No "Talking Points" because we have had a flurry of activity down in Maryland about the sniper story. A man is being questioned by authorities.... He is a former Marine who was shot in a domestic dispute. And there were sniper suspicions. I have in my hand here a report from ABC News on their Internet. And it goes into great detail about some of the things they found in this man's car.... And our guy Brian Wilson is now on the scene....

BRIAN WILSON: Well, we have been working on this feverishly, as you might imagine, because it did sound very interesting right off the bat. You have a case in Baltimore, they found out the guy had an AR-15 rifle. There were some very interesting coincidences.... However, the sources here in Montgomery County...tell us that at this time they do not believe the Baltimore case and the serial sniper are related.... They are waving us off the story. They have done so now this evening five times.

O'REILLY: OK. And ABC News has not pulled back on it. I just want to give you an outline of what they have put up on their Web site. That the police have found scanners and maps in a van this guy owned. Investigators obtained a search warrant, went in, and they found a Marine Corps sniper manual, police scanners and an arsenal of weapons that included shotguns and a semiautomatic rifle. All of that's firm....

WILSON: And if I could say, Bill...investigators are leaving themselves just a little bit of wiggle room here, because they say they're going to stay in touch with the Baltimore investigators and watch very closely as that evidence develops....

Police tried once, twice--five times--to tell reporters that what looked for a second like a promising lead in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper killings in fact was nothing, a false alarm. Yet O'Reilly couldn't let it go on his Fox News show. And on ABC's "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings led with it--as did a few local stations.

A lot of play for essentially no news, but some say this sort of much ado about nothing, in the middle of covering a stunning news story that was undeniably something, is where the media failed in covering the sniper. No one questions why local news organizations cleared pages and broke into TV programs in October to reveal the latest as a mystery gunman picked off one random innocent after another in the suburbs of the nation's capital. But critics do wonder why the story dominated national reports for days on end, carrying that same level of urgency. And they wonder why that feverish, breaking news tone persisted, peppered with speculating "experts," on days when the shootings subsided and police had nothing to report.

Paul Slavin, executive producer of "World News Tonight," says he knew early on that these random shootings were more than interesting--they were unprecedented. And it was all happening in the D.C. area, still bruised from 9/11. "This raised it to the level of national importance," he says. "I don't think there's ever been anything like this in this country before."

Slavin also says that because no more pressing news broke, the story could dominate as long as it did--even during days when the sniper lay low.

Ted Gest, a former crime reporter for U.S. News & World Report who's now president of Criminal Justice Journalists, points to the networks' sweaty-palmed handling of the Baltimore suspect-who-wasn't as a perfect example of the media overdoing it. "Should that have been reported? Probably. But not as the lead story. Seems like an incidental detail." Gest adds, "It's clearly a pretty giant story, so I can't fault the local media too much, but I do fault the national media for giving it huge coverage night after night."

Joan Ryan, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, echoed a growing sentiment when, in a column, she sharply criticized the national media for packing the airwaves with "parlor game"-style speculation, serving only to freak people out and egg on the killer. But, Ryan says, when it comes to the D.C. media covering this in their own backyard, almost no amount of coverage would be too much. Plus, the local reports can shake loose vital tips for the police. "Somebody looking to these newscasts knows something," Ryan says.

More than a week after the first shooting, which took place on October 2, newswatchers developed something of a love-hate relationship with the story. While the public insatiably devoured every detail about the case, it was increasingly obvious that it wasn't just the good guys sitting in their living rooms and flipping from CNN to ABC to anything available--the sniper seemed to be tuning in as well. People recognized a pattern between things said on-air and the killer's actions: It's broadcast that schools are safe, a schoolboy is shot; it's broadcast that the sniper is drawn to Maryland, he moves to Virginia. But did this realization result in toned-down coverage? Nope, it merely became one more topic for on-air discussion.

Consider this somewhat surreal exchange on CBS' "The Early Show" between the host, Russ Mitchell, and James Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University. Fox is speculating about how the sniper feels about all the speculating:

MITCHELL: In addition to the attention that he's getting from law enforcement officials, do you think this person is enjoying the media having profilers on and--and speaking about this--this subject all the time?

FOX: Oh, he's having the time of his life. He is a celebrity in his own mind. I mean, this is giving him a tremendous satisfaction, a feeling of power, control, dominance. He's in charge. He's calling the shots--not only the gunshots, but also how the entire media is handling the situation.

Michael Bass, senior executive producer of "The Early Show," told Richard Huff of New York's Daily News that knowledgeable sources were scarce. "We find there's a roadblock, a lack of access [by the police]. We're then left with talking heads, very smart, intelligent people, investigating from afar."

Howard Rosenberg, the Los Angeles Times TV critic, says the sniper coverage took on a life of its own. There seemed to be no such thing as "enough" on this, with every fact and every nonfact being reported and reported and then reported a few more times. And when there was no way to possibly say "no leads" and "police urge anyone with information to call the tip line" again, speculation filled the silence.

"This has all been so highly speculative, it's almost appalling," Rosenberg says. "The constant questioning of 'Who do you think the sniper is?' I've seen that four times this morning already."

Like the Chandra Levy/Gary Condit frenzy or Jon Benet Ramsey or any of this summer's hyped kidnappings, Rosenberg says the sniper coverage hit circus-level--just-the-facts ma'am reportage thrown right out the window in favor of an amateur game of Clue. "There's almost like a sense of entertainment," Rosenberg says. "Everything but the dancing girls."

Austin Long-Scott, an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, wonders why the media take a story like this and make it The Story, reporting it silly even when nothing much is happening, while plenty of news is going down all over the country. Why go on-air hourly or devote pages to the sniper, he says, as opposed to delving into, say, Oakland, California's atrocious murder rate? A story like the ongoing problems of Oakland is certainly harder to report, he says, but arguably much more important, long-term, than a shooting spree. "What's the sniper issue crowding out?" Long-Scott asks.

Ryan and others, however, say that these killings, so shockingly random and so confounding, do deserve national play--just less of it and with more restraint. "There's nothing wrong with this being the lead story when there's a murder," Ryan says, "but I don't know you have to spend half the newscast on it.... I'm in San Francisco--the sniper's not gonna get me."