Critiquing the Media in the Casey Anthony Trial

Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times Media Critic

St. Petersburg Times Media Critic Eric Deggans has been keeping an eye on the media coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial.

He said he would not lump all the media together if he were to consider grading the coverage. For example, he would grade segments.

Traditional newspapers, network TV newscasts, NPR, he said, would get a B+. Not so for some cable news channels and tabloid newspapers. They would get a D.

Deggans said he sounded a lot of warning bells about how pointed coverage might affect the jury deliberations and the trial itself, and how injecting money into covering the story might affect the trial.

He pointed out that both the prosecution and defense in the Anthony trial used the fact that certain witnesses got money to tell their stories to try to impeach their testimony in court.

In his words, "As much as we were afraid that all this press coverage may have made it harder for her to get a verdict in her favor, it didn't stop the jury from ruling in her favor, and I suspect that because it turned her into a celebrity and it made the world sort of pay attention to her case that she had resources that she would not have had if she was an anonymous defendant."

Deggans expects a made-for-TV movie to come out of the Casey Anthony trial.