On Dec. 20, 1989, 27,000 American troops invaded Panama in Operation Just Cause in an attempt to oust Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega and bring him to justice.
Well, he was booted and has been in an American court four months. What?
Twenty-three U.S. soliders died and more than 300 were wounded, not to mention hundreds of dead Panamanians and tons of rubble, and you didn`t realize he was in the dock?
If there ever was a tidy illustration of the childlike attention span of the media and public in a TV age, it`s the four-month-old Miami trial of Noriega on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and
racketeering.
According to the U.S. marshal`s office, 52 news organizations originally requested permanent press credentials, but only 32 have shown up enough times to keep them. Just 10 to 20 reporters make regular appearances. By comparision, there were 488 requests at the William Kennedy Smith rape case in Palm Beach, and most who showed were forced to watch on TV because the courtroom was tiny.
The Tribune sent a correspondent to cover the prosecution`s opening statement, but then the reporter split. The Tribune has relied on brief accounts, usually buried in the front section, by wire services and a sister paper, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Only the opening prosecution statement has made Page 1. Meanwhile, it covered the Smith trial with its own reporter and placed her stories on Page 1 five times.
Even papers with correspondents at the Noriega trial more or less regularly, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday and Los Angeles Times, have tended to bury accounts.
When Carlos Lehder, a Colombian drug kingpin now in federal prison in Illinois, testified, a wire-service story that the Tribune used called his testimony the trial`s ”most explosive.” It linked both Fidel Castro`s brother and a former Colombian president to drug trafficking. That made Page 19 on Nov. 21.
The New York Times used a staffer`s long accounts of Lehder`s two days of testimony but ran them on Pages 20 and 16. The Los Angeles Times reporter tagged Lehder a ”latter-day Joseph Valachi” who ”revealed secrets of a murderous cartel that ruled the drug world for more than a decade.”
Murderous, yes; Page 1, no. That made Page 19 on Nov. 21.
The trial suggests Noriega, who was originally indicted by two grand juries on Feb. 4, 1988, played footsy with the CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration on one hand, drug traffickers on the other. Indeed, Newsday disclosed Noriega`s involvement in a secret DEA anti-drug program. But the Los Angeles Times put that on Page 27, and when it independently confirmed Noriega involvement in the previously secret Operation Negocio, that ran on Page 27, too.
Other disclosures include Noriega`s secretly moving $23 million into a numbered London bank account; the Medellin drug cartel`s funneling $10 million to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contras; use of Panama as a safe haven to ship drugs to the U.S.; and government deals for some witnesses, even putting some drug traffickers back on the street. A Dec. 18 Sun-Times wire story, which maintained that the disclosures ”may be very embarassing for President Bush,” ran on Page 37.
One reporter covering the trial says his editors are uncomfortable with the assorted creeps, including drug traffickers, among the 46 government witnesses. Fine, but what did they expect?
There`s virtually no interest by TV, which enjoyed an electronic orgasm in Palm Beach. But the Noriega trial is in a no-cameras federal court, and only ABC and CNN exhibit a regular presence. CNN, with a large Latin American audience and a Spanish-language service, has averaged two or three stories weekly, dwarfing its rivals.
NBC has done little and ”The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather” has run two stories in four months, says CBS Miami bureau chief Mike Whitney.
”Noriega was The Bad Guy 2 1/2 years ago, but there have been other bad guys since,” says Whitney sardonically. ”The majority of people just figure he`s a drug-dealing scum bag.”
CNN Executive Vice President Ed (no relation to Mr. Jane Fonda) Turner concedes that ”you couldn`t have asked for a greater lead-in to a story,”
namely the invasion and maneuvering to get Noriega to court. But the trial has competed with heavy news, notably the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, the presidential campaign beckons.
But ”if we determine that it`s boring but important, we should be there,” said Turner, who may assign a longer piece sizing up the trial. The judge is recovering from surgery, and the trial resumes Jan. 27, with the start of the defense case.
David Lyons, covering for the Miami Herald, is taken by the modicum of interest, ”given what one sees of our (U.S.) relationship to Noriega, the presence in Panama of drug-cartel leaders, and use of Panama for money laundering and transshipment of drugs.”
Another Lyons perception might be painful to relatives of those killed or wounded during the Bush administration muscle-flexing in Just Cause. ”It`s clear the U.S. government had very little evidence on Noriega” at the time of the invasion, Lyons said. ”Privately, I hear from (government agents) that they were happy the trial didn`t start immediately after he was captured.
”It was only during 1 1/2 years of pretrial maneuvering that they could literally travel the world and find witnesses and evidence they needed.”
Ray Sons, the Sun-Times` best sports columnist, announced his retirement last week. The move came just as the paper began heralding him on ads touting its sports section. But the paper, run tightly but needing further downsizing, made an early retirment offer he couldn`t refuse: 50 weeks pay without alteration in his pension. Sons, 65, planned to retire at the end of 1992, anyway.
Music critic Robert Marsh took the deal, as will photographer Jack Lenehan, copy editor Dewey Helmick and Harlan Draeger, one of the paper`s most versatile and savvy city reporters. He`s the sort who`s hard to replace, especially as financially pressed media nationwide go young and cheap.
The Tribune`s Mike Royko believes that Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle is a slick journalistic thief who has ripped him off in the past. Last week he told the Boston Herald that Barnicle did it again Dec. 22, appropriating a Royko classic: a modern-day Mary and Joseph effort conceived at the Chicago Daily News long ago and rerun often.
Barnicle denied it and was backed by Globe Editor Jack Driscoll, who called the Mary and Joseph concept so basic, ”I wouldn`t be surprised if 100 columnists did it last week.”
Jack, find two others and I`ll pick up a dinner tab at Locke-Ober next time I`m in town.
Looking for good investment opportunities? Sue the media. Here are depressing facts for the media, partly inspired by WBBM-Ch. 2 anchor Walter Jacobson.
When the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a $3.05 million libel verdict won by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. against Jacobson and CBS Inc. in April, 1988, it was the first time a media libel award exceeding $1 million was affirmed after all appeals were completed, according to a wrapup of media libel verdicts in the 1980s.
The Libel Defense Resource Center indicates the average award for the two years ended Dec. 31, 1990, was nearly $4.5 million, 10 times greater than the average during the previous two years and three times greater than the average for the period of 1980-88. For the decade, the average award was $1.8 million. Even if you omit the three awards of $10 million or more during 1989-90, the average was about $760,000, or 76 percent greater than that of the previous two years. Omit awards of $10 milion or more during the decade, and the decade`s average was $672,563.
The media are still in good shape when a judge directs a verdict, taking it away from a jury. In those instances, the media almost always win. But when cases go to a jury, the success rate plunged during 1989-1990, with the media losing 69 percent of the time compared to 58 percent the two previous years. For the decade, the media lost 72 percent of the time when a case got to a jury.
Traditionally, the media have seen 75 percent of their lower-court losers overturned on appeal. In 1987-1988, media losses that were upheld rose to 38 percent, and in 1989-1990, to 48 percent.
