Local media goes overboard on Mehserle verdict outcome; will it backfire?

The other day I reported on the Bay Area media's manpower to cover the jury verdict on the Mehserle murder trial in Los Angeles.

Make no mistake, this is a big story. Everyone knows the potential outcome could cause some sort of disturbance, disturbances, not only in Oakland, but as we hear, even in SF and perhaps in LA itself.

Rioting? Maybe. Certainly, an ample amount of demonstrations are in store, unless of course the jury comes back with an emphatic guilty of voluntary manslaughter against the BART cop accused of murdering Oscar Grant. Unlikely. The legal people predict something in the middle. We really don't know.

Speaking of which, our media legions here are hellbent on driving a story that they really don't have a pulse on, yet. The assignment desk is WAY, WAY ahead of the potential for trouble. Nobody really knows what the hell's going to happen. Sure, fine, send a reporter to Downtown Oakland and get the obligatory sound bite of the shopkeeper worrying about riots and violence. Makes perfect sense. Running it over and over? Bad, lazy TV reporting, and that goes for the radio people.

We've seen this pattern for the better part of a week. Question: What if NOTHING happens? How foolish would that look? Take reporter A doing a scene-setter from the corner of 14th and Broadway on the night of the verdict standing ALONE with nary a rock-thrower in sight.

I'm not saying that will happen; I really don't know and that's the point. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. We all think we KNOW what's in store, but inevitably things like that tend to backfire.

For all we know, there could be complete bedlam, riots, mass violence statewide...or maybe nothing, but if you've seen the local TV news and radio peeps doing endless segments on the "potential"--the "potential"?

Again, I don't deny the significance of this story. It is huge both in terms of the storyline, the origin, the 18 months from its inception to the time now days, perhaps hours, from a verdict.

The easiest method is to go by the book and send out the beat reporter to gauge the "what ifs", the, "how are you dealing with this?"--all well and good, and thoroughly appropriate. One or two reports are fine--pretty basic standard fare. Beyond that, we're talking overbearing, overdone and journalistic laziness, all too frequent in a town that's known to be better than that, or maybe I'm dreaming.

We'll see.