O.J. Simpson was Patient Zero for our media culture
In the 2017 film I, Tonya, a biopic based on the Tonya Harding conspiracy and attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, Martin Maddox (actor Bobby Cannavale) describes himself as a reporter for Hard Copy and calls it a “a pretty crappy show that ‘legitimate’ news outlets looked down on — and then became.” There was an entire spurt of tabloid news programming that spawned up in the 1990s, Hard Copy being one of them, along with Inside Edition, which gave us Bill O’Reilly.
