ABC'S JUDY MULLER WRITES ABOUT
THE INCIDENT AT THE O.J. TRIAL

From her book: "NOW THIS":

Of course, poking fun at your own profession is risky. As long as you happen to be covering the same story, it's hard to remain above the fray. During Simpson's criminal trial, World News Tonight sent me down to the courthouse to do a story on the media circus surrounding the case. In a sort of Pirandello-like confrontation, I found myself both audience and unwitting actor in that circus.

A woman who worked for a now-defunct TV tabloid show called Premier Story would station herself and her camera crew outside the courthouse every day for the sole purpose of conducting ambush interviews on the sidewalk, asking obnoxious questions she never really expected the answer to.

"What was in the bag, Mr. Kardashian?"

During these outbursts, the camera was always on her and it never stopped rolling because she was, in fact, her own story. If it can be called journalism at all, it might be called "masturbatory journalism." The actual story - that is, the brutal murders of two people and the trial of the famous man accused of killing them, was mere backdrop for the performance of the reporter.

I decided she should be an element in my story about the media circus outside the courthouse. As soon as my cameraman started shooting the scene, she turned on him, peppering him with questions. He looked flustered, so I came over to help. I asked her what she was doing, and we got into this bizarre exchange in which she explained that she was simply interviewing us to find out why we were interviewing her. And round and round it went until the very dim bulb in my head flickered to on and I "got" that I was her "get" for the day. Her camera had been rolling the whole time.

When I walked away, I was followed by a buy holding a camcorder who kept pushing himself on me, whispering questions into my ear, such as, "Why won't you talk to that lady, Judy? Are you hiding something? You can dish it out, but you can't take it?"

His camera was literally two inches from my face. I kept trying to walk away, with no success. So finally, in a fit of frustration, I whirled on him and asked him to leave me alone, only I didn't say, "Leave me alone," I said something more direct, in language I would not normally use in the vicinity of a camera. But what the hell, I figured this was just one of those wackos who hang outside the courthouse with an amateur video camera.

Then my producer gave me the bad news. "I kept trying to tell you," she said, "but you weren't listening to me!"

"Tell me what?"

"That guy works for Premier Story. I've seen him out here before."

And so, I found myself no longer an ironic observer of the media circus. I was in the center ring, and screaming obscenities to boot. I later learned that the same people had harassed Jeff Greenfield the day before when he was doing a story for Nightline. The two of us and our confrontations with their cameraman made up the entire bulk of their show for two nights running, complete with my expletive barely deleted (re-run several times in slow-motion, no less). Jeff had no expletives deleted because he had the good sense, in the first place, not to utter them.