“Now I know it is our duty as American citizens to respect the jury system,” said Ms. Grace, who selected juries in her past life as a prosecutor. “But I know one thing: as the defense sits by and has their champagne toast after that not-guilty verdict, somewhere out there, the devil is dancing tonight.”
Thanks in large part to Ms. Grace and her cable channel, HLN, the viewing public was captivated by Caylee Anthony’s death and Casey Anthony’s trial to a degree that has not been seen in years, even drawing comparisons in some quarters to the O. J. Simpson trial. Thanks to social networking Web sites like Facebook, members of the public reacted to every moment of the televised testimony in real time, driving even more coverage on national morning news programs and on local newscasts.
“The O. J. trial may have had broader media attention; however, social media platforms were not in place at that time, so the collective echo chamber has been unprecedented,” said Brent Idarola, a Frost Sullivan analyst who follows social media.
The trial, Mr. Idarola said, raised a question of whether “this makes for a good case against cameras in the courtroom.”
Most trial watchers, it seemed, suspected that Ms. Anthony was responsible for her daughter’s death. As the verdicts were read on Tuesday, Facebook, Twitter and other such sites were flooded with reactions from viewers expressing their disbelief and outrage. Some Twitter messages openly wished for Ms. Anthony’s death.
The collective skepticism about her innocence and shock over the verdict all but guarantees that the case will remain fodder for tabloids and traditional media alike. On Tuesday evening, CBS News rushed to complete a prime-time special about the case; ABC News flew Terry Moran, an anchor, and Dan Abrams, a legal analyst, to Orlando in time for “Nightline.”
Ms. Grace has been a guest almost every morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” leading the charge against Ms. Anthony, whom she disparagingly calls “Tot Mom.” HLN covered the trial much more extensively than any other channel, and was rewarded with record-level ratings; by July 1, five weeks into the trial, it was garnering 1.2 million viewers at any given time of day, even more than the normally first-place Fox News Channel.
On Tuesday, Ms. Grace bitterly concluded that, “In the end, Tot Mom’s lies seem to have worked.” The channel quickly scheduled a weekend special called “Justice for Caylee.”
James Poniewozik, the media columnist for Time magazine, wrote on Twitter that the lesson of HLN’s trial coverage was a lesson shared by cable news over all: “The reward goes to those who pick a side.”
CNN said that from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, when the verdict was read, its Web site registered one million live-video users, 30 times as high as the site’s previous four-week average.
Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner Research, said the real-time reactions to the trial and the verdict reflected the gradual adoption of the Web as a primary mode of communication throughout the day.
Services like Facebook and Twitter “are the modern-day equivalent of the office cafeteria, a local bar or the coffee shop,” Mr. Valdes said. “Those venues have diminished some in modern times and to some extent been replaced by social media.”
Before the defense lawyers headed to the restaurant, Terrace 390, they criticized what they called the media’s bias against their client.
“I think we should all take this as an opportunity to learn and to realize that you cannot convict someone until they’ve had their day in court,” said the lead lawyer, Jose Baez.
Ms. Grace took offense. The lawyers attacked the media “like we had something to do with it,” she said. “We didn’t have anything to do with it. This was all Tot Mom.”
Ms. Grace then went live outside the restaurant, where another anchor, Jane Velez-Mitchell, interviewed passers-by about their fury at the jury’s decision. Their fury had extended even to the restaurant, which was harangued by online commenters, prompting the posting of a disclaimer on its Twitter account and on its Web site: “We would like to remind everyone that we do not dictate who walks through our doors.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f1c244a9cb56d659426d576c0ba18861
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