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By the time Al Cowlings pulled that Bronco onto the freeway, the public was driving the media. Our big public explainers had lost their absolute command of our consciousness. Competition, from outlets like cable TV, was one reason, the Cold War vacuum another: There was no more great overarching national narrative to prioritize the news, and nothing forcing the public to stick with the great explainers if it didn't like their choices. Therefore, the audience didn't exclusively receive its culture from the same three networks anymore, and they, in turn, didn't always understand the audience's language anymore. You can attribute much of what we've seen in the media this decade -- talk radio, call-in shows, chat rooms, instant polls -- to ratings and immediate gratification, but it's also the recognition that one had to start listening to the audience, and even involving them, in order to thrive. That's what was so poignant about Jennings' being flatfooted by that caller, apparently not immediately understanding that "Baba Booey" meant he'd just been had. In O.J.'s America, you didn't need to be a teenager to have your own confounding subculture anymore. Mr. Higgins had his Howard Stern subcult and was shoving it in ABC News' face: "You think you know something I don't? Well, here's something you don't know!" (That's part of the basic appeal of Stern, who's always defined himself through his conflicts with media authorities, from big broadcast companies to the FCC.) And that moment of boggled disconnect presaged the next year's, when trial-watchers in the media saw the jury announce a quick verdict and concluded, "Well, they must have found him guilty! The jury had its own alien subculture, where having evidence planted in your house is easily as believable as a hunk of lab equipment determining a man's guilt. Even in the country of Andrew Jackson, we tend to think that institutions are lessened when they open themselves up to the public; hence the implicit hierarchy in Jennings' line about being "reduced" to the audience's level. In past breaking news events, the elites were there to put the rest of us in our place: Walter Cronkite, accused by a caller -- unaware she was speaking to Cronkite himself -- of crying "crocodile tears" after JFK's assassination, responded, "Madam, this is Walter Cronkite, and you are a goddamn idiot." Or they would put underlings in their place: There was ABC's Frank Reynolds, after being fed the erroneous line that James Brady was killed in the Reagan assassination attempt, barking, "Let's get it nailed down, people!" on air. But the night of the Simpson chase the audience, essentially, reached out and put ABC television in its place. I'm being unfair to Peter Jennings here, because it wasn't just Jennings or ABC or even TV alone being brought down. No one seemed to know what they were doing that day. I still have a clipping of the most hilarious typo I've ever seen in the New York Times; it ran the next morning. The caption to two photos read, "The chase began on Interstate 5 near El Toro, in Orange County, and ended about 50 miles away at Mr. Simpson's home in Los Angeles." But the photos -- whether an outright mistake or a joke that didn't get torn down in time -- were of 1) O.J. running a play with the Buffalo Bills and 2) O.J. being served tea by Leslie Nielsen in one of the "Naked Gun" movies. The Bronco chase was the signal event of a period in media that would offer people great opportunity and responsibility, when our viewing and reading choices would be myriad, often unedited and frequently unreliable. We would be able to see much but not necessarily to believe everything. We would all become aware of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, conscious of our own role as viewer- | ||
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