SMITH TRIAL COVERAGE HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH RAPE, JUST CELEBRITY

Maybe it's something about the first week of December. The pack gets restless, needs a place to be, something to do.

Last year at this time, the pack went to New Madrid, drawn by projected earth movements and seismic adventure. Enthused by the attention and inspired by commercial opportunity, many natives thought they had died and gone to uplink heaven; only NASA boasted more satellite dishes than the river town for that brief period.

The show has gone farther south this winter ... better climate, nicer restaurants (not that the Chat `N' Chew isn't quaint) and a more tawdry assignment.

Media sorts of all rank and recognition are alight in West Palm Beach. American royalty is on trial, Kennedy offspring, and it is under the steamiest of circumstances.

If a Kennedy can't attract a camera then a magnet can no longer attract iron. Charismatic and decadent, this clan has seen its share of headlines.

By some estimates, there are 500 news people in south Florida covering the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith.

Only 16 get to sit in the courtroom each day, while 150 camp in crowded courthouse rooms set aside for the media onslaught. Some of the rest maintain the technical apparatus that allows persons to enjoy this spectacle in their living rooms; others just loiter around the fringe looking for the odd sidebar or lucky break.

The question is valid: Is all this necessary? The answer is easy: No.

There are times when professionals are not proud of their profession. When police officers are videotaped beating up a crime suspect, all good cops hang their heads. When a lawmaker is caught taking a bribe, honest elected officials are tainted.

Along these lines, I don't think many news people are boasting these days about the high standards of journalism being established at West Palm Beach.

The Associated Press and United Press International are represented at the trial. Almost every daily newspaper in the nation subscribes to one of these wire services. ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC all have representatives on site. There is not a television in America out of range of at least one of these networks.

Through these six outlets, every American has access to trial developments ... in itself, awesome coverage for a rape trial in a state court. But the pack swells with local reporters, print and electronic, from around the country, dispatched south to satiate the egos of publishers and news directors who want their own people on the scene.

A scoop in this atmosphere is as hard to come by as a pale-skinned Floridian, and 98 percent of what the pack reports is available through the major news agencies. Still, these local reporters are there to ferret out the "Providence angle," or whatever.

The live coverage on CNN may educate much of the nation about the goings-on the strategic maneuvers, the frequent tedium, the occasional outbursts in a rape trial. There is some insight to be gained about the legal process.

But instead of shedding light on the crime of rape, the Smith trial coverage tends to trivialize it. The focus of all this attention is not a violent crime, but a famous family.

Look at it this way. Let's assume, quite conservatively, that each state has two rape cases being tried today; that's 100 rape trials, and only one is receiving this kind of attention.

A local reporter might sit in on some of these cases; to the media in some metro areas, the cases may be just workaday listings on a docket. But the one in West Palm Beach gets the attention of 500 journalism types.

What does that tell the 16-year-old girl from Miami who is pulled into a car and sexually assaulted by members of a street gang? What does it tell the older woman from Sikeston (or Marble Hill, or Tamms) who has her home invaded and her privacy violated in the most savage way possible?

Are the crimes against them less deserving of our notice because their assailants don't come from famous families?

Of course not. But this trial in Florida is not about rape, at least not to the pack that descended to chronicle it. It is about celebrity, and the overkill is mere voyeurism.