Goldman - Media circus: a look at private tragedy in the public eye

Kim takes us to a place the camera rarely has an opportunity to go. An intimate look inside the lives of grieving survivors with a level of trust only a fellow survivor could earn. At times of tragedy, mass media tends to skim the surface. Kim goes deep into the most private thoughts of people who both want to be left alone, yet have a remarkable story to tell.

Kyra Phillips, CNN Anchor/Correspondent

Behind every headline lies a personal story that is often forgotten or never told. Kim Goldmans Media Circus renders an eye-opening glance into the reality of high-profile victims personal loss and struggle for healing.

Debra Tate, victim advocate and author of Sharon Tate: Recollection

Media Circus is a fantastic read about living through, surviving, and recovering from trauma. Goldman makes very important comparisons of cases from the past 30 years and shows how social media and media in general has impacted the victims while living under the public microscope.

Katie Beers, author and victims rights advocate

Copyright 2015 by Kim Goldman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Goldman, Kim.

Media circus : a look at private tragedy in the public eye / Kim Goldman, with Tatsha Robertson.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-941631-60-7 (hardback)ISBN 978-1-942952-00-8 (electronic) 1. Victims of crimes in mass media. 2. Mass media and crime. 3. Bereavement. 4. FamiliesPress coverage. 5. Privacy, Right of. I. Title.

HV6250.25.G645 2015

070.44936288dc23

2015016705

Editing by Leah Wilson

Copyediting by Shannon Kelly

Proofreading by Alda Trabucchi, Clarissa Phillips, and Brittney Martinez

Text design by Publishers Design and Production Services, Inc.

Text composition by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Emily Weigel

Jacket design by Sarah Dombrowsky

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

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To the victims and survivors of violent crime, your poise and bravery in the face of adversity and trauma is admirable and inspiring.

Sister of Charles Manson murder victim Sharon Tate, August 9, 1969

Ex-wife of the DC Sniper, October 222, 2002

Mother of gay hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard, October 12, 1998

Wife of the Amish Shooter, October 2, 2006

Parents of teen murder victim Skylar Neese, July 6, 2012

Mother of six-year-old Newtown tragedy victim Jesse Lewis, December 14, 2012

Sister of murdered NASCAR driver Mickey Thompson, March 16, 1988

Parents of Aurora theater shooting victim John Larimer, Mother of Aurora theater shooting victim Rebecca Wingo, July 20, 2012

Wife and daughter of police brutality victim Eric Garner, July 17, 2014

Survivor of familys brutal murder at sea, November 12, 1961

I want to share with you several stories, but not the stories you might expect from me.

Yes, I could share the one about my father, Fred Goldman, a salesman at the time, driving for hours in his white Mitsubishi 3000 up and down the Ventura Freeway in Southern California on June 13, 1994, listening to talk radio reports about Nicole Brown Simpson, the wife of famous ex-football player O. J. Simpson, found slaughtered alongside an unidentified male. Another murder in Los Angeles, he thought sadly, as he pulled into his next appointment, unaware that in just a few short hours his son Rons drivers license picture would be plastered on every channel, revealing him as that unidentified male.

I could tell you how I saw images of the Brentwood crime scene on television that same day as I ate my lunch in the Wells Fargo break room in San Francisco, not realizing it was my brothers mutilated body beneath the bloody sheet.

I could talk about the mob of reporters that regularly settled in for the day in their satellite trucks outside our home in the quiet Los Angeles suburb of Agoura. With their microphones and cameras, journalists from every news outlet were just waiting for something to write about us. Just waiting. The questions never stopped: Did you know O. J. Simpson? What was Ron doing there? Were he and Nicole lovers?

I could tell you stories like these, but I wont. Instead, I will take you behind the scenes of ten other American tragedies, from as early as the 1960s, when the news consisted of three channelsNBC, ABC, and CBSand a handful of prominent newspapers and magazinesthe Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the New York Times, LIFE, Time, Vanity Fairto as late as today, in 2015, when news outlets and social media sites are too numerous to count. We will spend time with the families themselves, whose lives were featured in hundreds of headlines, news shows, and articles. You know these families. We all do.

We were introduced to them in their most vulnerable moments, when they were experiencing the worst days of their lives.

You watched her collapse to the ground when she realized her six-year-old baby was in that classroom in Newtown.

You heard her scream, the kind that surges from the gut, when law enforcement confirmed her daughter had purchased a ticket to the doomed midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora.

You may have been skeptical when she said she didnt know why her husband would shoot those little Amish girls.

You might have even seen news clips of them weeping with joy and relief when the parole board denied freedom to Charles Manson and his followers.

You sent these families messages of love. You sent them letters of encouragementand in some cases, hate. You talked about them at the dinner table, over the water cooler, on Facebook and Twitter, as if they were the new reality show everyones watching. But you also related to them; you had so much compassion for them. It felt like you knew their pain. But did you, really? Do you really know what they were experiencing when the cameras werent rolling?

Ill take you there, beyond the mass media coverage, for an exclusive glimpse inside their liveson their terms. Why? Because I think there are some things you need to know.

Its been twenty years since my quiet life was hijacked and I was thrown into the chaotic world known to many as the Trial of the Century. And every year since, Ive watched cable news, newspapers, magazines, the internet, and social media replay to a new generation pivotal moments in the horror that was our daily life, highlighting each painful memory for people to debate and judge. Did the glove really fit? Was there an accomplice? Was the detective really a racist? This story, my family story, lives on forever... with every click of the mouse.

I have often wondered: Did the intense media coverage impede our ability to mourn the loss of my brother, or did having so much support comfort us? Sometimes I think the global hug we received helped us in our darkest hours; I never felt alone. But I also