The Kennedy Media Frenzy

I literally chased Ted Kennedy around twice in my journalism career – for weeks in Massachusetts in 1988 when he and then-Herald owner Rupert Murdoch tangled over cross-ownership rules; and, for months in Florida in 1991, when Kennedy was present during the Palm Beach-Easter Weekend shenanigans that eventually led to William Kennedy Smith’s acquittal on rape charges.

There are days when I miss being a newspaper reporter. Tuesday was not one of them.

As soon as the Wall Street Journal news alert about U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor landed in my e-mail inbox at 1:17 p.m. (ET), I flashed back to those days and began imagining the wall-to-wall “team” coverage.

How long will he live? Find tumor survivors who beat the odds! Get medical experts! Where’s a graphic showing the left side of a brain? Will he run for re-election? Who will run for his seat? Who will take his place as “the liberal lion” of the Senate? What does the loss of Ted K mean to Massachusetts’ clout in Congress? What does the family say? How is Vicky holding up? What do his friends say? What do his “neighbors” in Hyannisport say? What do Republicans say? What do the presidential candidates say? Send the intern out to do “man in the street” interviews. Get the story about how even Kennedy’s critics are praying for him. Get the “real” story. Assign someone to talk to every nurse and doctor and janitor at MGH. Are celebrities visiting? Are celebrities calling? Is the family airing out the mansion in Hyannis, so everyone can stay there? Who is behind the scenes managing all this for the family? Let’s run that old story about how Steve Smith used to be the fixer.

It wasn’t long before some Boston reporters were speaking of Kennedy in the past tense. Canned retrospective stories about the tragedies that have befallen the Kennedy family were dusted off. Our ABC affiliate interrupted programming to provide live coverage for the afternoon. One radio reporter gave Kennedy credit for the Big Dig this morning, even though most folks around here know that was Tip O’Neill’s bonanza.

In their zeal to “cover” the story, the media smothered it – treating Kennedy as if he had already been given Last Rites.

At his point, there are only three stories that haven’t run yet.

One is an in-depth “sinner” story, recounting Sen. Kennedy’s personal problems. Even my old employer, the Boston Herald, the hands-down winner on Day One of the local coverage war, showed admirable restraint, running a “Triumph over Tragedies” timeline that put Kennedy’s life in appropriate, if abbreviated, context.

The second untold story is the one that always appears after all other angles have been exhausted – the public media hand-wringing story. Reporters interview other reporters and journalism professors to figure out if they went overboard in their coverage. Here’s a tip: If you feel compelled to do a story examining whether you should have done all the stories you did, then it’s safe to say you should have chosen not to do some of them in the first place.

And third story is what’s known as the “inside story”: When did the Kennedy family know and what did they do when they did? You can bet your mortgage that the family knew by Saturday that the Senator had a brain tumor. You don’t think the best medical team in the world didn’t run every imaginable test the moment Kennedy was admitted?

But they wisely kept a lid on it, telling the media it would be days before they had an answer to his mysterious seizure. And who can blame them? These folks are smart about PR. They used the time to protect their privacy and to get prepared for the media onslaught. The front page, color picture of a smiling, very much alive Ted on the front page of today’s Boston Globe is the most visible evidence of their thoughtful planning to exercise some control over the media frenzy.

By 7:30 a.m. today, the media monitoring service Cision had logged 2,774 individual stories on the Kennedy saga in Massachusetts, and Google News had tracked close to 4,800 media mentions of “Kennedy and tumor” worldwide.

You have to wonder what the media will do if medical treatment allows Kennedy to live one, two, three or even 10 more years. But you don’t have to think hard to predict the coverage when the end comes, as it does for us all.

Remember the stories you have seen in the last 24 hours. You’ll be seeing them again.

~ Ed Cafasso, Managing Director