Month: June 2005

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In Wake of Trial, Mostly Shallow & Insulting Reports from Media – MB #276

In Wake of Trial, Mostly Shallow & Insulting Reports from Media — MB #276 JUNE 22 2005 — In the wake of Michael Jackson being cleared by a mostly white, conservative Santa Maria jury on 10 felony counts, there have been mostly fatuous reports about how his celebrity “got him off” and about how “stupid” the jurors were. Latched onto that lazy bandwagon are the arrogant talking heads pretending to know what they are talking about; trying to retry Jackson based on his possession of legal pornography, legal alcohol and legal books, all in an effort to make themselves feel better. Just how do you derive an illegal activity based on legal activities? Well, you simply ignore the facts, pretend you know what you’re talking about, and wail incessantly, all while stabbing your finger into the air on camera like a hysterical banshee. Or you can get your information from tabloid reporter Diane Dimond; whichever is simpler. The media certainly got their faces cracked wide open with this acquittal. And after the trial, they seemed to have moved on because the outcome wasn’t as financially advantageous as they were hoping. The media in general have been woefully inadequate at asking tough, in-depth questions about the prosecution (persecution) of the acquitted Jackson. They have thus far refused to ask just why in hell this “case” got this far in the first place, especially with so many things wrong concerning the various and contradictory stories the accusing family told.

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Blather From The Cable Jurors – The Day

[b]Blather From The Cable Jurors[/b] By TIM RUTTEN Published on 6/18/2005 If you hang around a courthouse long enough, one of the things you learn is that people willing to predict a jury’s verdict are the sort who take stock tips from their barbers. These days, however, the news organizations most preoccupied with sensational trials are the cable television news outlets, and they are creatures of appetite rather than principle or even brute experience. … Thus, the broadcast farce in the 90 speculative minutes preceding Michael Jackson’s acquittal in Santa Maria Monday. On Court TV, which routinely uses everything but card stunts to cheer on the prosecution in whatever case it’s covering, those one-time prosecutors turned Valkyrie anchors, Nancy Grace and Kimberly Guilfoyle, unhesitatingly predicted conviction. Over on CNN — that’s big CNN, the one that’s still mostly respectable — defense attorney Robert Shapiro flatly stated, “He’s going to be convicted.” Meanwhile, the analysts on MSNBC hedged their bets a bit by parsing the various combinations of conviction and acquittal Jackson might receive. No equivocation at Fox, though, where former prosecutor Wendy Murphy confidently predicted “there is no question we will see convictions here.”

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Court TV found guilty of lacking fairness – Cincinnati Post

[b]Court TV found guilty of lacking fairness[/b] Publication date: 06-15-2005 The Michael Jackson trial was a great disappointment to me, but it had nothing to do with Mr. Jackson or the verdict. Instead, my disappointment is focused on what had been one of my favorite TV outlets, Court TV. In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have what might be called a special interest in that channel. The man who is credited as a founder of cable’s Court TV, Steven Brill, once told me at a gathering in Washington, D.C., that a program with which I was associated was his inspiration, Back in the late 1980s, I was the host of a nationally syndicated show called “On Trial.” It was the brainchild of a wild and woolly – and innovative – TV producer named Woody Frazier. On a cross-country trip, Woody watched local newscasts and learned that, for the first time, cameras were allowed in a growing number of courtrooms around the country. He decided to take advantage of this new environment by creating a show. He would send three, and sometimes four, camera crews across the country to cover interesting trials. They would be edited in such a way that two or three ongoing trials would be covered every day on the Monday-through-Friday program. It was a great idea and got decent ratings, but it was too expensive to sustain in syndication. However, Steven Brill watched the show and thought it might work on cable. He was right. Court TV was born.