Mixed messages

A small but telling moment from the Kobe Bryant media frenzy:

Earlier this week, Fox Sports Net's Southern California Sports Report told viewers that a Denver radio station had broadcast an unconfirmed report that Bryant had a previous relationship with his accuser in the Eagle County, Colo., rape case.

The TV picture went to split screen for an analysis by a New York-based legal-affairs expert who twice within half a minute referred to the radio report as "evidence."

Multiply that moment of imprecision and you can appreciate why the news media's handling of the case feels chaotic and contradictory.

Speculation is coursing through the Internet, sometimes making its way onto sports talk radio, where it hardens into fact as a 10-second news update. Competitive pressure between 24-hour cable TV sports and news outlets results in prolonged conjecture about the credibility of Bryant's accuser. Mainstream newspapers, torn between old standards and new fears of losing readers to broadcasters or cyberspace, are split over how much to tell readers about the accuser's past. Even a hallowed media policy -- withholding the names of victims of sexual assault -- is under fire in a few quarters.

Gaining unlikely respect

Coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial of the mid-'90s conferred newfound respectability on gossip tabloids such as the National Enquirer, which -- while sometimes paying for interviews -- broke stories that TV and daily newspapers felt obligated to follow. The line between tabloid and mainstream journalism has been blurred ever since.

In the Bryant case, the new player is the Internet.

There are about eight times as many North American Internet users -- more than 160 million -- as there were during the Simpson case. Their thirst for immediate information, and the determination of entrepreneurs to profit from it, has led to Web sites such as www.freekobe.com, where thousands argue the case and treat rumors about the 19-year-old accuser as though they were fact. (The Web site, which sells "Free Kobe" merchandise, boasts that it is making a financial donation to support "gender equity" in sports.) Existing sites such as www.sexcriminals.com run is-Kobe-guilty? polls. ("This is entertainment at its best!" one user recently e-mailed the site.)

For several days this week, other Web sites attracted considerable attention by publishing purported photographs and the name and e-mail address of Bryant's accuser. Then it turned out the sites had the wrong young woman -- an 18-year-old whose mother said she is an acquaintance of the accuser and has a similar first name and hair color. The family hired a lawyer to demand Web sites stop using the photos.

"The Kobe Bryant case may be a kind of watershed moment for the Internet," said media critic and historian Neal Gabler. "I'm just astonished by it."

Pressure from the Web

Gabler said pressure from the Internet is indirectly responsible for the way a wide variety of characterizations of Bryant's accuser have made their way into the mass media.

"The Internet has no editor, so everything gets out there. Then it gets picked up by talk radio, which also has no filtering system. Then that process puts pressure on more traditional news outlets, like local newspapers, to pick up the story because it's out there and people are talking about it," Gabler said. "These newspapers are in competitive situations. Once they pick it up, there is pressure on more responsible organizations to retail these rumors, if not publish them as fact."

Elements of a story

Layers of classic elements -- rich athlete, young woman, small town, mysterious liaison, betrayed wife, shocked parents, the specter of prison -- make the Bryant case irresistible. Numerous tabloid, television and conventional news media reporters have interviewed young people described as friends of the accuser in an attempt to examine her credibility--a process that mirrors what Bryant's defense team is expected to try to do in court once the case goes to trial.

However, these stories have painted a contradictory picture. (In an effort to mock these stories, an editorial cartoon in the weekly Vail, Colo., Trail a week ago showed a young woman telling a cluster of TV cameras: "It's from a reliable source. It's from the cousin of a friend whose niece is best friends with an acquaintance of a girl who knew someone in the same class as the victim.")

Gregory Moore, editor of the Denver Post, which has published numerous characterizations of the accuser by her friends, said his paper has "a more expansive view" of what is publishable than The Times. "Just as we've reported aggressively about Kobe, we want to give readers reasonable information" about the accuser. She filed a rape charge against a very prominent person; that person's life is open to scrutiny and, to a certain degree, hers is, too."