Reality Check Commentary: At Least O.J. Reality TV Was Real
The Bronco chase actually happened, Nicole really was killed, and the blood trace evidence was real. There were none of today’s deep fakes.
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At Least O.J. Reality TV Was Real
By Steven Brill, NewsGuard Co-CEO
When O.J. Simpson died last Wednesday, I got calls from multiple media outlets — from ABC to CNN to the BBC to the tabloids — asking for my comment. As the person who created Court TV and championed the idea that letting people watch what actually happens in what our Constitution says are supposed to be public trials, rather than let commentators and participants spin what happens from the courthouse steps, it was assumed that I would have something profound to say about the passing of the defendant in what everyone called the Trial of the Century. Indeed, I could certainly have filled five or eight minutes reminiscing about conversations with O.J.’s lawyers, O.J. himself, or Judge Ito, or even recounting what happened when my then-14-year-old daughter asked Johnnie Cochran during a post-trial visit to our home how he could have defended the Juice.
I declined the invitations because I could tell that the story line that much of the press was using and that I would be expected to chime in on was that the O.J. drama marked the beginning of reality television — and, with it, the decline of serious journalism. For example, The Washington Post’s retrospective was headlined “After O.J. Simpson’s trial, an insatiable appetite for reality TV.”
My hesitation was that to me, the supposed age of reality television has long since passed. Using O.J.’s death to pontificate on that seemed nothing more than a lame pretext to show the Ford Bronco chase again, or to show Johnnie proclaiming in court after he had had O.J. try on the gloves, that “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” For me, it was more complicated. I realized that I would have had to engage in a longer, not-made-for-soundbites argument that O.J. and Court TV may have ushered in a new era of reality news consumption, but that that era began ending 10 years later — when social media platforms began their plundering of reality. It was a nuance that clearly wasn’t suited for this kind of one-day story: Someone died. Tell us quickly what he and his celebrated trial that you televised meant to us and our culture.
So, I decided to pass on trying to offer my more complicated answer — which is this: Whatever else you think of the excesses or the tabloid nature of reality TV, the content was real. The stuff actually happened. That media diet has been replaced by a world where, as the readers of this newsletter know, 51 percent of Americans who refused the COVID-19 vaccine did so because they thought Bill Gates had implanted a mind control chip in it. Where the Baltimore bridge collapse was done by the Israelis. Where the U.S. is bribing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with villas and yachts. Where Target is selling satanic-inspired clothing for kids. And where even the O.J. story has now escaped beyond the reality TV era; social media last week claimed that O.J., who died of cancer, instead died from his COVID vaccine.
So, perhaps we should look back at the O.J. trial as the good old days.
Reality TV has been replaced by wildly truthless social media — with the internet allowed by the digital platforms to be polluted by everyone from Russian disinformation operatives to conspiracy theorists to political demagogues to all varieties of fraudsters and lunatics. They are now the source of “information” for too many people, especially kids, who rely more on TikTok or Instagram for “news” than they do on any kind of TV news.
The O.J. trial actually happened, and the world got to see it. The Bronco chase was real, not some deep fake. The witnesses and evidence were vetted in open court. The blood and footprint evidence implicating O.J. was real, not created by AI. The gloves actually did not fit. Although the verdict that seems to have sprung from that live, in-court glove drama was debatable, it was real. Everyone agrees on the basics of this news event, even if they mostly think the verdict was wrong. The debate is over a shared set of facts, a shared reality. For me, that’s the good old days.
Which is why it would be great to get back to “reality TV,” by televising the Trump trials rather than letting those on both sides spin it all.
Steven Brill is the co-CEO of NewsGuard. He is also the founder of Court TV, The American Lawyer, and Brill's Content Magazine.
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