Story of King Beating Put L.A. Media in Spotlight : Reporting: The Times emphasized the political aspects, the Daily News stressed the pattern of force.
The Rodney King beating--broadcast on television night after night after night--became a nationwide phenomenon, a nationwide scandal, faster than you can say “Jack Webb.â€
The New York Times put the story on Page 1 five times in 11 days. Time and U.S. News & World Report both made it into cover stories. Playboy interviewed Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. Vanity Fair profiled Gates. Editorial writers from coast to coast thundered their outrage. Editorial cartoonists had the most fun they’d had since Richard Nixon was President.
Even conservative nationally syndicated columnists who traditionally defend law enforcement castigated Gates and his department.
George Will said the LAPD is “demonstrably guilty of an intolerable level of abuse, much of it resulting from racism.†William F. Buckley Jr. called the King beating a “grisly episode†and wrote, “One has to conclude that there is an insensibility in the Los Angeles police that is difficult to understand and impossible to defend.â€
It’s obvious why the rioting that followed the not guilty verdicts in the King beating trial became big news, but why did the King story itself--before the riots, before the trial--create such a firestorm of media attention outside Los Angeles?
There are several possible explanations--starting with the compelling, appalling nature of the King video itself. Other factors probably include the long-term glamorous image of the LAPD, dating back to “Dragnet†days, and the manner in which the video seemed to confirm what had recently been muttered in some quarters--that the LAPD no longer deserved that reputation. In addition, charges of police brutality against minorities are not unique to Los Angeles, so the case resonated with similar complaints elsewhere.
The King beating was, in effect, the quintessential L.A. “Police Story,†the quintessential “Dragnetâ€--even if it did seem to have been directed by Brian DePalma or David Lynch rather than Jack Webb. But the King story was ultimately a local story, a story about a local police department--its national image notwithstanding--and it was, appropriately, local newspapers that provided the most compelling and complete coverage of the beating, the department and the continuing aftermath of that 81-second videotape.
One of those newspapers is the L.A. Weekly, an alternative paper long dismissed as ideologically biased and journalistically unreliable. But the Weekly--greatly improved since Kit Rachlis took over as editor three years ago--published several stories on the LAPD that have won widespread praise.
Warren Christopher, chairman of the commission appointed to investigate the LAPD, says the Weekly’s careful reconstruction of how the commission deliberated and reached its final conclusions was “the most comprehensive single piece†he saw on the commission’s intricate decision-making process.
But day in and day out, two daily newspapers in Los Angeles provided the most thorough coverage and devoted the most space and resources to the story. For the first time in years here, there was real competition between two such newspapers--The Times and the Daily News--on a developing local story.
The Times and the Daily News are different newspapers, with different missions. The Daily News is essentially a local newspaper that offers some statewide, national and international coverage; The Times is a global newspaper, with significant resources devoted to local, statewide, national and international coverage. In deciding the proper mix of Page 1 stories on a given day, Times editors are more likely than their counterparts at the Daily News to decide that violence in Jerusalem or a Supreme Court ruling in Washington is more important to their readers than a City Council vote in Los Angeles.
Both The Times and the Daily News pursued the King story aggressively. Each has published several hundred stories on the King case. Each put it on Page 1 frequently. Each printed stories that broke new ground, alternately beating each other and chasing each other--and sniping at each other--throughout coverage of the beating, the selection process for the new LAPD chief, the trial and the riot (although this series was largely completed before the verdict and riot).
Peter H. King, city editor during the first eight months of Rodney King coverage and now a columnist, said in an interview that the Daily News sensationalized some stories and overplayed others that had nothing to do with Rodney King--in effect, he says, declaring “open season on anything with the acronym ‘LAPD.’ â€
Gates’ predecessor, state Sen. Ed Davis, agrees. Interviewed--like everyone in this story--before the King verdicts and riots, Davis says he thought the Daily News was “out to get Daryl.â€
Meanwhile, Ron Kaye, assistant managing editor in charge of local coverage at the Daily News, says The Times often under played the King story and was so “preoccupied with the mise en scene of the beating†itself that it failed to look at the “larger issues†of the department’s record, culture, autonomy and political power.
That approach, Kaye says, was “typical†of Times coverage of the political power structure in Los Angeles “over a long period of time.†The Times is both part of that power structure and unwilling to “take Los Angeles as seriously as (does) the Daily News,†he says.
Although Kaye concedes that some Daily News stories were “hyped somewhat,†he denies the paper was irresponsible or anti-Gates. Similarly, Craig Turner, metropolitan editor of The Times, acknowledges, “There were certainly days when I think we underplayed†the King story, but he, too, denies charges that the paper’s basic coverage or play was flawed.
It would be difficult to deny, however, that the media--virtually all the media--did make some mistakes in covering the King story. Often, for example, the media referred to King as simply a “black motorist†who was beaten by police, rather than as someone who led police on a high-speed chase, drove recklessly, was intoxicated and allegedly appeared high on drugs and resisted being handcuffed--factors that clearly influenced the jurors who rendered not guilty verdicts on most charges against the four officers accused of beating him. (One officer will be retried on one count.)
Similarly, routine references to the “independent†Christopher Commission have implicitly conferred a certain unassailable legitimacy to the commission’s findings, without acknowledging that the commission was, after all, appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley, Gates’ longtime foe--a man with whom Gates had not spoken for 13 months before the riots broke out.
Neither of these criticisms is intended to justify the beating or invalidate the commission findings, and, in fact, they ultimately seem relatively minor, given the enormous daily flow of King coverage.
Of greater concern is the question of whether the media, by the very nature of their coverage, contributed significantly to a widespread assumption that the officers were guilty and would be convicted--an assumption that helped fuel the shock, rage and violent reaction of so many when the officers were not convicted.
Such questions are impossible to answer definitively, of course. Discussions before and after the verdicts strongly suggest that most people assumed the officers would be convicted primarily because of what they themselves saw on the videotape of the King beating. But critical media coverage of the LAPD in the aftermath of the King beating clearly underscored that perception, and Gates--a longtime critic of the media in general and of The Times in particular--is more convinced than ever that in covering the King story, the media unfairly stigmatized the LAPD and prompted political leaders to act precipitously, while simultaneously ignoring the good work the LAPD has long done.
Gates says it is his “sincere belief†that current management at The Times “hates†him, and he blames The Times--the dominant news outlet in town--for leading a “media frenzy†instead of taking a position of “restraint†after the King beating.
The Daily News, which Gates had long found sympathetic in the years before Rodney King, “might be (even) worse†on the King case and its aftermath, he says.
Stories in both papers, Gates says, have repeatedly and unfairly cast him in a negative light in the King affair and in his subsequent battles with the Police Commission over community policing and high-level LAPD reassignments.
Early in the King affair, for example, Gates says his detectives found racist messages transmitted between LAPD patrol cars at the time of the beating, and he notified Bradley and the Police Commission and told Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner that he wanted to make public the transcripts of the messages.
But Gates says Reiner told him that would not be proper because the material was part of a criminal investigation.
When Bradley subsequently directed the Police Commission to order the release of the transcripts, however, the Daily News said the LAPD released them “after pressure†from Bradley, and The Times implied the same. Reiner subsequently said he had not opposed releasing the tapes.
The controversy over the patrol car messages was blown out of proportion by the media, Gates says. In going through six months’ worth of messages--6 million of them--Gates says his department found 44 “of a racial natureâ€--â€exactly 12 (of them) . . . where neither party was of the racial group referred to.
“Twelve out of 6 million,†he writes in his newly published autobiography. “Could any other organization, if its employees’ private lines were bugged, come out as well?â€
Editors at both The Times and the Daily News say they have tried to be fair throughout their coverage of the King beating and its aftermath. Some LAPD officers think they have succeeded.
“I guess I’d say that in my mind . . . (coverage of the King story) was probably balanced,†says Lt. Stuart Maislin, adjutant in the LAPD support services bureau. “I think for the most part we don’t and we shouldn’t expect the media to do public relations work for the department.â€
In many ways, especially in the early stages, the manner in which the Daily News and The Times covered the story reveals as much about those institutions as it does about the LAPD itself.
The Daily News covered the story as a local paper, a brash upstart with a young staff one-fifth the size of The Times’, making its first sustained splash in the journalistic world beyond its home base in the San Fernando Valley. The Times, as the longtime Establishment paper, has a tendency to take a broad overview and try to fulfill what its editors say is its “responsibility to the community to be cool and reasoned†in Peter King’s words.
The Daily News began as the weekly Van Nuys Call in 1911, and for much of its existence, the paper was free, with a green front page to distinguish it from other local throwaways. As the San Fernando Valley grew, the paper changed its name several times, broadened its coverage to include the entire Valley and gradually increased its frequency of distribution--and scope of coverage--until it reached seven days a week in 1979.
Known as the Valley News and Green Sheet from 1953 to 1977, the paper became the Daily News in 1981 and converted to fully paid circulation in 1982.
The Times was once a largely local paper, too, but over the years has increasingly become national and international in scope, with bureaus in 38 cities outside Southern California, across the country and around the world.
When William F. Thomas, then metropolitan editor of The Times, was named editor in 1972, many saw the move as an indication that The Times would retreat into more parochial journalistic concerns after more than a decade of expanding horizons.
Instead, the paper continued to expand its reach--and it generally gave local news less prominent display than did virtually any other major metropolitan newspaper in the country. Local Times reporters often grumbled that it took a major earthquake or a riot to make Page 1, and as The Times kept opening new bureaus from Miami to Manila, local critics began asking, “So when is The Times going to open a bureau in South-Central Los Angeles or East Los Angeles?â€
When Shelby Coffey III became editor of The Times in 1989, it was widely assumed that local news would fare even worse; Coffey’s 17 years at the Washington Post presumably made Los Angeles news of little interest to him. Instead, emphasizing an aggressive, hands-on approach, he put a renewed stress on local and regional news, which then began appearing more frequently on Page 1 (although national and international news continue to dominate Page 1 of The Times on most days).
Not surprisingly, given their disparate histories, there were noticeable differences in the King coverage in the two papers:
* The Daily News, the scrappy challenger, quickly focused on the most dramatic element of the King story--the issue of whether the King beating was “an aberration,†as Chief Gates said, or part of a larger pattern of LAPD brutality and racism that went unchecked because Gates and the department were largely unaccountable. The Times, as the paper of record, divided its initial focus between trying to determine exactly what had happened the night of the beating and what it meant in a broader context, examining local political repercussions, making national comparisons and looking at damage to the city’s image.
* The Daily News consistently gave the King story more prominent display than did The Times. In the first month after the beating, the Daily News made King its lead story on Page 1--the most important story in the paper--20 times; The Times did so four times. Over the first seven months of King coverage, the Daily News made King, the LAPD or a related story its lead story 89 times; The Times did so 19 times.
Almost half the Page 1 stories on King in the Daily News were displayed beneath large, five-column headlines--and 80% of them were placed on the top half of the page, “above the fold,†in the journalistic vernacular. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of Page 1 stories on King in The Times were displayed beneath one- or two-column headlines, often on the bottom half of the page--â€below the fold.â€
One could question whether all those Daily News stories warranted Page 1--whether, for example, the Daily News was right to publish on Page 1, while the Soviet Union was collapsing, the announcement that the Christopher Commission had decided to donate its archives to USC. But Daily News editors clearly made a decision to keep the story in the public eye, and for months the King story thoroughly dominated the paper.
“This was the most important story in our newspaper on any given day, and it got played as such,†says Mark Barnhill, the city editor of the Daily News.
The Daily News continued to play the King story big during the trial--31 stories on Page 1 compared to nine in The Times.
One explanation for the difference in the play the two papers have given the King story is purely structural; unlike the Daily News, The Times has a separate Metro section, with its own front page, on which it can also give significant display to stories that lose out in competition for space on Page 1 of the main news section. In addition, the Daily News often gives its lead story a large, four- or five-column headline, regardless of subject matter, while The Times takes a more moderate approach and reserves big headlines for truly major stories. In the month of April, for example, The Times used Page 1 headlines of more than three columns only six times; the Daily News did so 17 times.
But the primary reason for the difference in how the two newspapers have played the King story is that the Daily News is a local paper, and as such it consistently gives more prominent Page 1 play to local stories of all kinds than does The Times.
Thus, on many days when the Daily News made Rodney King its lead story, The Times led with news from the just-ended Persian Gulf War, the collapsing Communist bloc countries, the Mideast or Washington (although after rioting broke out April 29, the story took over all of Page 1 of The Times for four consecutive days and thoroughly dominated Page 1--and the entire paper--for almost two weeks--much as it did in the Daily News).
Before that, Times play on the King story was “quite strong (and) . . . appropriate in the context of the Los Angeles Times,†says The Times’ Coffey.
The Times did devote a considerable amount of space to the King story--much of it on Page 1 --but Times editors, unlike those at the Daily News, did not so often think it was “the most important story†in the paper that day.
Editors at The Times and the Daily News also disagreed on what was the most important aspect of the entire King story.
“I think the most significant long-term effect (of the King beating) was that it changed the political equation surrounding the LAPD,†says The Times’ Turner.
“Before Rodney King,†Turner says, “the LAPD was unassailable politically in this town.â€
There was little reaction in 1987 when The Times published a story questioning whether the fundamentalist religious beliefs of Robert L. Vernon, assistant chief of the LAPD, improperly affected department policy and practices. But when the issue arose again in the aftermath of the King beating, it became a big story, prompting an investigation and a lawsuit. As Turner says, “It became politically acceptable to criticize or challenge the LAPD†then, and that made possible the selection of a new police chief and the proposal of the sweeping Christopher Commission reforms, which would include true political accountability for the LAPD.
That is why, early on, The Times wrote several stories about Mayor Bradley’s chief aide allegedly “orchestrating moves†behind the scenes to force Gates to resign. The Daily News covered the political maneuvering too, but it did not immediately do so as aggressively as The Times.
The Daily News was much more aggressive than The Times, however, in pursuing the “aberration†and accountability questions.
To Robert Burdick, editor of the Daily News, that was “the key issue: Is this going on all around us or to any significant extent, or is that truly an aberration of some people who acted grossly improperly but in isolation?â€
The Daily News had published a lengthy, critical examination of questionable shootings by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies five months before the King beating; David Parrish and Beth Barrett, the two reporters who did the stories, say that in the course of their four months of research, they had repeatedly come across indications that LAPD use of force warranted a similar investigation.
“That’s one of the things that gave us a head start,†Burdick says.
In the immediate aftermath of the King beating, the Daily News also published good historical perspectives on such subjects as the LAPD chief’s acquisition of power and autonomy and on harsh relations between Gates and Bradley and between blacks and the LAPD. But the primary focus of the Daily News remained the issue of whether there was systemic, unchecked brutality in the LAPD.
The Times did not publish its first significant story on this issue until March 29, almost three weeks after the beating, and no Times enterprise story on the issue appeared on Page 1 until May 19, more than 10 weeks after the beating. But beginning six days after the King beating and continuing for months, the Daily News published a number of lengthy stories at the top of Page 1 describing citizen complaints of excessive force and city payouts and settlements of those complaints as having increased considerably in recent years and pointing out that few LAPD officers were seriously punished for their misconduct.
One early, top-of-Page-1 Daily News story said that an officer in the King beating had been “suspended without pay for 66 days in 1987 after kicking a handcuffed suspect and hitting him with his baton.†The Times published that information on the same day--as a brief, subordinate part of another story on the first page of the Metro section.
On June 9, the Daily News published a story based on police documents that said more than 250 LAPD officers “were named in three or more excessive- or unnecessary-force complaints in a recent six-year period.â€
The Christopher Commission ultimately reached a similar conclusion about “problem officers†in the department and cited the Daily News study in its report. Indeed, one of the primary findings of the commission was that “there is a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force against the public.â€
Two months after the Christopher Commission report, the Daily News published a big, Page 1 story looking at the status of the 44 officers cited in the report as having had the most complaints filed against them.
The Daily News’ combination of strong Page 1 display and story after story purporting to show a disturbing pattern of increasing police brutality and lawsuits, with little corrective action, led to the widespread perception among those close to the story--including journalists and critics and supporters of the police--that the Daily News was covering the King story more aggressively than was The Times.
Among some members of the Christopher Commission, that perception was especially strong--in part, perhaps, because the commission and the Daily News shared a similar primary focus: the significant number of LAPD officers who use excessive force and escape serious punishment.
Mickey Kantor, a commission member, said the difference in Times and Daily News coverage was “astonishing.†The Daily News, he said was “very aggressive†and “digging . . . all the time†and “most important . . . they placed the stories on the front page above the fold many, many, many days, which of course did not happen in the L.A. Times. . . . The placement of the stories made a major impact on the people reading the newspaper.
“That is not a reflection on the reporters involved,†Kantor rightly points out. “It’s a reflection on the editorial decisions made as to where you place the story.â€
Bryce Nelson--a former reporter for both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, now a journalism professor at USC and the director of press information for the commission--went a step further in praising Daily News coverage.
“If you wanted to keep track of what was happening on a day-by-day basis and you had one newspaper to read, you probably would have read the Daily News,†Nelson says (although he adds that The Times did a “superb job . . . better . . . than the Daily News†in its first-day coverage of the Christopher Commission report itself).
Many journalists also praised the Daily News coverage.
Robert Reinhold, Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times, says he had to look at the Daily News so often during the early months of the King case that his office now subscribes to it.
The Los Angeles Times published “an overwhelming amount of information,†Reinhold says, but the Daily News “seemed to be able to go for the jugular a little more quickly than the L.A. Times. . . . They asked a lot of the right questions.â€
But Times Editor Coffey insists that The Times did a first-rate job on the King story, despite what Turner, the paper’s metropolitan editor, calls the “handicaps†the paper began with: The two Times reporters who “knew the most about the LAPD†were not in town when King was beaten. David Freed, who had covered the LAPD from 1986 to 1989, was on assignment in the Persian Gulf; Richard Serrano, the police reporter since the fall of 1990, was in Kansas City, where his mother had just died.
It is a measure of how much Serrano’s two-week absence meant that the first day he got back, he worked the telephone and spent 10 hours at one source’s home and uncovered what appeared to be a major police cover-up in the case.
Serrano’s discovery gave The Times the exclusive story on how LAPD officers and their supervisors had filed official reports that allegedly “downplayed the level of violence†used against King; that story--the first of many exclusives for Serrano--led the paper two days after his return to Los Angeles. (The jury in the King beating trial ultimately acquitted the officers of filing a false report).
The King story energized scores of reporters at most local media, and exclusives, competition and comparisons soon became a high-stakes parlor game, especially among those who followed the case and its coverage closely.
Merrick Bobb, a deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission, says, “A lot of the hard news coverage by the Daily News was better than The Times,†especially in showing the King beating as “a crystallizing example†of police brutality. But he thinks Times coverage overall was “more comprehensive.â€
“When I factor in the quality of news analysis, the quality of editorial reaction and op-ed reaction and Opinion section reaction then, overall, I think the Los Angeles Times . . . does a better job,†Bobb says.
“If the Rodney King story is (the story of) a police beating and a process of a community after that coming to grips with and dealing with the consequences of that, then the Los Angeles Times coverage is better . . . (at) making all that comprehensible,†Bobb says.
Several people interviewed for this story--including some who were otherwise critical of various aspects of Times coverage--praised Bill Boyarsky’s columns on the political implications of the King case and a number of Times editorials.
The Times also published a wide range of enterprising overview stories--on the phenomenon of group violence, on past kingmakers in the city and on the racial component of excessive force complaints. On several other stories--community policing, police brutality outside Los Angeles and the failure of the district attorney to prosecute officers accused of brutality--the Daily News published first but the subsequent Times stories had considerably more breadth and depth.
Daily News editors say those Times stories, among others, did not go far enough beyond the original Daily News stories to warrant the delay. Times editors say the Daily News stories on these and some other subjects were superficial, one-sided, rushed into print prematurely and did not meet Times standards.
But several people at The Times and many elsewhere agree with Boyarsky that for all the breadth of Times coverage, the Daily News “focused in faster,†was “better organized . . . moved faster . . . did a more aggressive job . . . a smarter job, used their resources better,†even though Times reporters worked hard and did, in Boyarsky’s words, “a helluva good job†after the Daily News “got off the block faster than we did.â€
Interestingly, neither paper gave its first King story prominent play. It ran on page 5 of in the Daily News, on page 28 in The Times (although The Times story had much more information and was accompanied by a photograph).
Both papers learned of the beating the day after it happened--too late in the day, editors say, to give it prominent display in the next morning’s paper.
Daily News editors say they didn’t learn of the beating until KTLA’s 10 o’clock newscast that night. The Times found out about the beating three or four hours earlier and arranged to have a reporter and photographer look at the KTLA video more than two hours before the 10 p.m. newscast. But Rick Collins, the paper’s metropolitan news editor, who supervises production of the state and local news pages, says he does not recall being told about the story until after 9 o’clock that night, when the first edition had already gone to press.
Collins says he and another editor subsequently discussed “tearing up†the Metro section to put the story on the front page of that section for a later edition, but “because of the workload involved . . . we decided not to do that,†a decision that, in retrospect, Collins seems to regret.
Tom Paegel, the night city editor who first handled the story, says he probably should have “lobbied†Collins harder to get better play for the story, but he says he “started trying to sell†the news desk on the possible significance of the story “between 6 and 7 (p.m.),†when the news editors are generally busy preparing the first edition, and “nobody really listened to me.â€
The following day, with CNN giving the King videotape big play, both the Times and the Daily News put the story on Page 1--The Times in the lower right-hand corner, under a two-column headline, the Daily News on the top half of the page, above the fold, with a five-column headline and a photograph.
That set the pattern for the two papers’ play on most days, and it contributed significantly to the widespread perception that the Times was not covering the story with the aggressiveness and “emphasis†it warranted, in the words of Stanley K. Sheinbaum, president of the Police Commission.
Like Sheinbaum, a number of people who laud the Daily News are longtime critics of the LAPD who were clearly pleased by the paper’s consistent Page 1 stories on allegations of widespread police misconduct. But even some Times staffers thought the Daily News was more aggressive than The Times on the King story.
Several blacks at The Times, bitter that the paper didn’t respond to their reports of widespread police brutality in South Los Angeles before Rodney King, were especially aggrieved that it was the Daily News, not The Times, that gave top priority to that pattern of excessive force in post-King coverage.
The Times could have beaten both the Daily News and the Christopher Commission on that story, says Times reporter Ron Harris.
Harris’ colleague, Andrea Ford, says it was “embarrassing to . . . pick up the Daily News day after day after day and watch ourselves being beaten the way we were. . . . The Daily News . . . kicked our ass.â€
Some whites at The Times also praised Daily News coverage.
Joel Sappell, an assistant metropolitan editor who helped supervise early Rodney King coverage at The Times, says Times reporters have done an excellent job on the King story--especially on broad, contextual issues and the “behind-the-scenes politicking in the mayor’s officeâ€--but he, too, admires the aggressiveness of the Daily News.
Although he thinks some Daily News stories lacked a “human dimension†because they were largely based on official documents and had little or no “street-level†observations and interviews, Sappell is reluctant to criticize the Daily News because he thinks the paper did “a good job in keeping their eye on the ball the entire time.
“They knew what the issue was; the issue was brutality within the LAPD, and they kept their sights on that,†Sappell says. “They saw Rodney King as a window into the LAPD, and they went through the window.â€
For all the debate about how the two papers covered the King story, however, what ultimately matters about local coverage of the case is not so much whether one paper was more aggressive or gave the story more prominent play than another or that one emphasized the pattern of brutality while the other emphasized the political machinations after the brutality.
What matters most is that the combined coverage of the Daily News and The Times--and the media in general, television included--helped prompt the city’s long-reluctant political institutions to initiate action that could ultimately make the LAPD more accountable to the community it serves. In the process, of course, many LAPD officers feel that the media has helped politicize the department and undermine both department morale and community confidence in the LAPD.
The LAPD’s slow response to the deadly rioting sparked by the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial--and the media’s coverage of that performance--are not likely to restore either that morale or that confidence.
Peter Johnson of The Times’ editorial library assisted with the research for this series.
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