Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing.
Leanna Byrne
News Editor
As the Casey Anthony media fiasco unravelled it kept Americans on the edge of their seats. There is no denying that the trial will not easily be forgotten, but it also puts the spotlight on ethics in the media. When it comes to the point where objectivity in the law is challenged by the media, it’s clear that we have a problem.
On the 24th of May, crowds clambered outside the Orange County Courthouse, waiting with bated breath for the most anticipated trial of the year. Tents, vans, camera crews and news anchors were crammed outside the courthouse, baying for every last morsel of the Anthony case.
Just like Louise Woodward, OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson before, it was once again clear that nothing captures the public imagination quite like a sensational courtroom scene. A month ago, most Americans would have said “Casey who?”.
The case read like something straight from a horror novel: the mysterious death of an adorable, vulnerable child, with all fingers pointed to her young irresponsible mother. Shakespeare could have written it himself.
It was like opium for the media mob. News stations across the country grabbed the story and milked it for all that it was worth. On the minute updates about the child-killing monster were being fed to American citizens daily, feeding their morbid appetite.
Talk show hosts dedicated entire programmes to damning “that lying, no-good slut”, rallying audiences to become part of the outcry. All of the media reports were infused with a profound sense of outrage and the urge to give that god-damn-son-of-a-bitch just what she deserved.
Any principles of balance or proportionality were cast aside. The media had chosen their angle and they left the defence’s argument untouched. CNN Headline News’ pursuit of the trial focused on the evidence pointing to a guilty mother. There were various reports of how the duct tape that was found around Caylee’s mouth was matched to the same unique brand that was found in the Anthony household, or how they found Casey’s car abandoned in a parking lot with a trash bag in it to mask the smell of a decaying body. However, none of the evidence reported was forensic, just circumstantial, something the media failed to mention.
Journalists such as CNN’s Headline News anchor Nancy Grace had no intention of covering an argument that they believed would never hold up in court. After all, it did not hold up with the public. Very few reporters questioned the defence. Eventually, the public relations company that were managing Casey’s media image had to realise that they were fighting a losing battle and called it a day.
Why is objectivity important? At the end of the day, bias is good business.
To prove it ratings soared as coverage of the trial doubled. One million viewers were watching CNN.com live, 30 times higher than the previous month’s average. Nancy Grace received an enormous boost in viewers, rivalling Fox News’ previously unassailable daytime show. The bigger cable news stations followed suit and increased their coverage of the trial. By the time the not-guilty verdict was announced almost every major media outlet had jumped on the bandwagon. Akamai Technologies’ Net Usage Index for News showed that traffic to news sites surged from about two million page views a minute to 3.3 million.
All throughout this “media circus”, few stopped to consider the damage the media was doing to the objectivity of the trial itself. Before the case ever came to court it seemed that Casey Anthony was convicted. Coverage of the trial was so overwhelming that the State had to bend the rules of court. Jury selection began on May 9 2011 and took longer than expected, ending on May 20, with twelve jurors and five alternatives being sworn in. Jurors were brought in from the Tampa Bay area, instead of Orlando and sequestered for the entire trial to avoid influence from information available outside the courtroom. Even the defence used the biased coverage as one of their main arguments, as defence lawyer Baez warned jurors to base their verdict on evidence, not emotions.
The media was acting as the 13th juror.
Aside from the undue influence that biased coverage was having on the court, another pertinent question regarding this story is how did a reputable station such as Headline News, which is a product of CNN, become so bent on ratings? Unlike Fox News, CNN takes pride in the fact that it delivers unbiased news reports. Nancy Grace, who is in fact a trained attorney, may have been pursuing her own agenda through the trial, but somebody must have allowed it. Whether or not sensationalist accounts of trials or any other story may send ratings soaring one would hope that media outlets would try to hold on to the values of objective and balanced reporting.
The same type of media corruption can be mirrored in how The News of the World conducted their affairs while producing news stories. Sensation sells, but at what cost?
The claim that the public is smart and that we can tell sensationalist stories from unbiased accounts is true for the most part. The fact is that the public are as much part of the media circus as the journalists and news stations across the world. We must ask ourselves why we are so intrigued by this case? Why this trial when there are countless murders in the US committed each day that are so similar? OJ Simpson was a celebrity, so was Michael Jackson, but Casey Anthony was just another number in the population.
The answer: news can become whatever the media wants it to be. A newspaper can only cover the amount of stories that each page can hold. That said, if the public is as much part of the media circus as those who report on it then they have the same amount of control over how news stories are produced. For the uneducated American, engrossed by melodramatic talk shows, there may be little hope as the media will devote attention to cases such as the Anthony case because the nation is fascinated by it. For the rest of us, we must remember to take a step back.
