Rising Above Ridicule

Ads draw press comments.

Toyoto’s interview coup.

Graffiti contest.

12/9/94

Ito decides to judge the comments press folks scrawled on L.A. Times’ Channel 2 interview full-page ads that were pasted on the media center walls. He also awards prizes along with .

 

Final Violation, Rescinded

Ito press coup

Channel 2 pulls interviews.

No late-night reruns.

11/29/94

After CBS affiliate KCBS-Channel 2 officials violated the terms Simpson judge, Lance Ito, had set before he agreed to do an interview with KCBS reporter Tritia Toyota about camps where Americas of Japanese descent were interned during World War II, Ito learned that the station planned to rerun the interviews — the initial interview had been divided into six parts. Airing them again would also violate Ito’s condition that the interview would run only once. So, rerunning them also a violated Ito’s conditions. At Ito’s request, I contacted the channel’s news director, Larry Parret, and asked him to reconsider. Parret called back later to say that Ito was right and that they would not air the interviews again.

Toyota Interview was Painful Lesson

Tritia was a friend.

An interview could save her.

Painful lesson learned.

11/17/94

Judge Ito explained to me why he agreed to do the Toyota interview, and conceded it was a big mistake.

Still, the subject of the interview was not to have been or even touched on the Simpson case or the fact that Ito was the trial judge. Toyota represented to Ito that she wanted to interview him as the son of two people who met as internees in intern camps the government set up to imprison Americans of Japanese ancestry during WWII in conjunction with a Japanese-American National Museum exhibit of the Hart Mountain WY camp where Ito’s parents-to-be were housed. Toyota’s employer welshed on the promise to avoid the Simpson case and other guarantees given Ito, and disaster ensued.

This is covered on pages 25-32 in my book, Anatomy of a Trial.

Even still, the lesson, so far as I am concerned, is that friendship has no place for professionals in matters involving members of the media, regardless of all the best intentions in the world.

 

They All Want One Now

Interview requests.

All were harnessed, now renewed.

Thanks goes to Tritia.

11/15/94

Every news organization covering the Simpson case had asked — some more than once — for an interview with the trial judge, Lance Ito, all of which he denied, most with gusto. Until KCBS news personality Tritia Toyota asked.

How that came about and the repercussions are detailed on pages 25-28 of my book,Anatomy of a Trial,  which is now available in as an audio download at Amazon Audible Audio either free with a free month trial subscription to to Amazon Audible Audio or for $17.95 without the trial (http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Trial-Lessons-Learned-Simpson/dp/B00MR600SM/ref=sr_1_1_twi_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416098726&sr=1-1&keywords=Jerrianne+Hayslett).

I also detail the wrath of the news media at Ito for doing the Toyota interview, never mind that officials at the KCBS TV station, where she worked, violated the conditions Ito set and that they had agreed. Los Angeles Times reporter Andrea Ford led the rant in a telephone call the evening she learned that the Toyota interview was to air a few days later. She and all the other news media that Ito agree to be interviewed by them immediately so they could beat KCBS.

Needless to say, Ito declined.

 

How an Interview Created a Train Wreck

This haiku, written 20 years ago today, marks the moment the wheels came off the tracks, which caused so much of the train wreck Simpson judge Lance Ito’s relationship with the news media — and his legacy as a result of the trial — is concerned.

The verdict is in.

L.A.’s new celebrity.

Judge this for yourself.

11/14/94

Judge Ito’s Channel 2 interview with Tritia Toyota airs.

Although this was the date the first of what turned out to be first of a six-parter aired, the debacle actually began weeks earlier, which I describe on pages 25-28 of Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. O.J. Simpson. It was a situation beyond my ability to save.