Bonkers. But the ridiculous machinations often obscured the human suffering—the battered wives, castrated husbands, grieving parents, molested teens, and disgraced figure skaters who had set it all in motion.
There was a very fine line between a revealing interview and the exploitation of traumatized people in service of tawdry tidbits and sensational sound bites. It wasn’t a surprise to see a recent reckoning over the treatment of troubled pop stars—Britney Spears breaking down on camera, Whitney Houston claiming, “Crack is whack.” Were we journalists or voyeurs, selling our souls for bragging rights and ratings? I was willing to be a soldier in the booking wars but often had to remind myself that, behind the headlines, these were real families, wounded and anguished, who would be left to pick up the pieces long after we had packed up our gear.
NOTHING SPARKED A booking frenzy like OJ Simpson, bringing out the worst in us all. At the time, it was almost impossible for me to get my head around the cultural significance of the tragedy and the racial division it exposed, since I was so busy chasing down lawyers and cops like an NFL running back sprinting through an airport.
When I heard Johnnie Cochran was representing Simpson, I knew we had hit the mother lode. Johnnie and I had maintained a friendship since my interview with Reginald Denny, and that would pay big dividends now. I’d interview Cochran multiple times, zeroing in on what he knew and when he knew it. He never tipped his hand. I could always tell he was stalling when he’d say, “Katie, you know, that’s a very good question.” You could see the gears turning as he crafted one of his famously smooth responses.
Reporters were crawling all over anyone even remotely attached to the case. We set our sights on （among others） Judge Lance Ito, who appeared to be enjoying his newfound fame. On his birthday, we had a cake topped with a chocolate gavel delivered to his chambers. It became known as Cakegate. “Ito Cake Collapses on NBC” bleated the New York Daily News headline. They reported that the confection had been purchased from a local bakery for $75, and that Ito had accepted it but didn’t eat a slice because he had the flu. “Some of the cake went to Ito’s law clerks,” said the News, “who pronounced it ‘moist’ and the remainder ended up in the TV press room where it was devoured by reporters.” I guess that’s called feeding the hand that bites you.
After the stunning not-guilty verdict, the race was on to score interviews with members of Simpson’s “dream team.” NBC’s Stone Phillips interviewed Robert Kardashian. Barbara nabbed Robert Shapiro, who fell out with Cochran after saying he’d dealt the race card from the bottom of the deck. And I got Johnnie for a Dateline special. A week later, I was told that OJ Simpson had agreed to a prime-time interview with Tom Brokaw and me. One hour. Live. No commercials. No ground rules. A Super Bowl–size audience. People were calling it “the interview of the century.” Please pass the Mylanta.
The upside was big, but the downside was bigger. If we didn’t open with “Why did you kill your wife, you monster?” OJ haters would say we were too soft and shouldn’t have given him a platform. But if we bore down on his alibi, history of domestic abuse, and the DNA evidence—all of which made him look guilty as sin—his supporters would accuse us of retrying someone who’d been acquitted by a jury of his peers. Add to that the fact that we were two white anchors questioning a Black man at a time when racial tension was boiling over. （Bryant had made the case that he should do the interview, but Andy Lack said no, pointing out that he and OJ were golfing buddies. Bryant was irate.）
We took a chartered jet to LA, armed with reams of research, and started cramming for this fiasco in the making. Just hours before the interview, Johnnie called—the team got cold feet and the whole thing was off. To soften the blow, Johnnie sent me a flower arrangement as big as a Bronco. Little did he know I was practically popping champagne. I had never been happier about the get that got away.
It was all so unsavory. The idea of racking up professional wins and losses as a result of so much violence and misery—Nicole Brown Simpson was practically beheaded. I cannot defend the media mentality at the time, except to say we all got swept up, including the viewers. Looking back, the ’90s were like this lurid last gasp—an orgy of tabloid excess to close out the millennium.
47
Tom-Tom
AS FAR BACK as I can remember, I liked being coupled up. I missed male companionship—someone to do fun things with, maybe even have sex with. For a year and a half, I’d been piling books and magazines on Jay’s side of the bed to make it seem less empty. I thought, Maybe the time has come to start thinking about filling that spot with an actual person.