FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Howard K. Stern's bodyguards came out of their black sport utility vehicle ready for a fight as they entered a sea of reporters and photographers. They were not disappointed.
With their mammoth arms outstretched, the two men guarding Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend knocked down everything blocking the courthouse entrance, jolting one photographer off a ladder, toppling several others like toy soldiers and sending equipment flying.
"A photographer was bloodied yesterday,'' Fox News correspondent Phil Keating said of Tuesday's scuffle. "I've never seen a camera scrum this chaotic and violent.''
The court battle over where Smith should be laid to rest has kept busy more than 100 journalists camped outside the downtown courthouse. Smith, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, died Feb. 8 at 39. Stern and her estranged mother are fighting over where she should be buried.
The media encampment is a half-kilometre sea of tents laced with electrical cables and filled with the hum of generators powering satellite trucks. Bemused lawyers from unrelated cases take breaks outside the courtroom just to watch the piranha-style frenzy.
Reporters have been bickering over who gets the front row spot behind the media barricade, jumping over bushes and trying to outbid each other for exclusive rights to interviews with the major players.
When the courtroom doors were finally opened to the media Wednesday morning, so many reporters tried to jam through at once, sheriff's deputies had to force them back.
"I think this is certainly one of the craziest, in terms of media melee, that I've seen in a while,'' said MSNBC host Rita Cosby.
Despite criticism of the media attention, she said the public is still "very curious'' about the case.
"I think there are some fascinating and important legal issues aside from the celebrity and Playboy connection,'' Cosby said.
NBC alone has a crew of roughly 20 people who set up equipment around 4 a.m. each day and finish work just before midnight. Court TV has been broadcasting the hearing live. The Associated Press has two print reporters, two photographers and six broadcast journalists covering the hearing.
Along with the major networks, celebrity news shows such as Entertainment Tonight, Extra, Access Hollywood and Inside Edition have also flown in staffers from Los Angeles.
Kelly McBride, a media ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, said coverage has been extreme, but that Smith's rags-to-riches story and lingering questions about her death are intriguing.
"There is a lot of intrigue over how she died, who is the father of her daughter and what will happen to her fortune, including the disputed inheritance,'' she said. "Those are compelling stories.''
Lee Wilkins, professor of radio and television journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said the attention given to Smith's death is "part of the whole process of celebrification'' that intrudes on the news.
"In essence, it is kind of like a train wreck,'' he said. "We all sort of rubberneck as we go by.''
