TV pundits accused of bias after 'shock' Anthony acquittal

No sooner had American mother Casey Anthony been acquitted on charges of killing her daughter than her lawyers lashed out against at "biased" TV coverage of the trial.
Shortly after the jury's decision today, one of Anthony's lawyers, Cheney Mason, said he hoped the verdict was a lesson to those who had "indulged in media assassination" during the three years between two-year-old Caylee Anthony's disappearance and her mother's acquittal for murder.
Mason did not mention anyone by name, but his remarks seemed aimed at Nancy Grace of the HLN cable TV network, whose prime-time ratings have soared since it began extensive coverage of the trial.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Attorney Cheney Mason delivers his own verdict to the media during defence-team celebrations. Photo: AP

"There is no way that this is a verdict that speaks the truth," Grace reported today.
Grace, a former prosecutor, began covering the Anthony story in 2008 as a missing-persons case and has made little secret of her belief in Casey Anthony's guilt.
HLN, formerly known as CNN Headline News, aired the full trial and extensive analysis. Its average viewership doubled last month compared to a year before, according to Nielsen.

Lawyer-turned-TV pundit Nancy Grace angered lawyers with her coverage of the trial.

Grace, the network's most prominent personality with an average of 1.5 million viewers a night, had her most-watched month ever in June. Her Facebook fan page has gained 49,000 viewers since the start of the trial, HLN said.
Mason criticised "biased and prejudiced and incompetent talking heads saying what it would be and how it would be".
"I can tell you that my colleagues from coast to coast and border to border have condemned this whole process of lawyers getting on television and talking about cases that they don't know a thing about, and don't have the experience to back up their words or the law to do it," he said. "Now you have learned a lesson."

The verdict brought shocked reactions from people waiting outside the Orange County courthouse. Photo: Reuters

Many commentators on other networks also expressed surprise at the verdict. Some filled time in the 45 minutes before the decision with discussions that assumed Anthony would be convicted, particularly because the jury reached a decision relatively quickly.
Others said on air afterward they had assumed there would be a guilty verdict on at least one felony charge.
Grace appeared to take Mason's comments personally.

Casey and Caylee in a photo presented at the trial.

"What does he care about what pundits are saying?" she said, adding that she believed shed tried and covered as many cases as Mason.
She criticised defence lawyers for delivering media criticism before mentioning Caylee's name in their post-verdict news conference.
"Caylee's death is now just a blip on the screen," she said. "It didn't mean anything. It didn't amount to a hill of beans."
During the Grace-anchored live coverage of the verdict, correspondents interviewed people outside of the courthouse, most of them expressing dismay. Grace took phone calls, including one from a woman who said, "That woman just got away with murder, Nancy."
Michelle Zierler, director of the Project in Law and Journalism at the New York University School of Law, said she had essentially been convinced that Anthony was guilty from watching coverage of the trial. The jurors, however, weren't exposed to this coverage.
She said Grace "is always certain that the defendant is guilty and needs instant punishment".
"It's sort of entertainment and . . . unfortunately too many people succumb to that sort of hype," Zierler said.
She said she believed Grace's opinion affected her analysis of the case.
By covering the trial extensively, HLN also filled a void left by Court TV, which was shut down and renamed Tru TV, with a focus on non-fiction programming.
The network will probably give extensive coverage to the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor at the time of the pop star's death.
AP


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/tv-pundits-accused-of-bias-after-shock-anthony-acquittal-20110706-1h1rd.html#ixzz1RJLQGkzb