The Ballad of Casey Anthony

In thinking about how to start this particular blog post, I came to a slightly embarrassing realization. But not embarrassing for me. Embarrassing for the general public. You see, all along I have felt that maybe it isn’t us, the people, who are polarizing, closed-minded and presumptuous, but instead it was the media that made us look that way. However, in the 24 hours since the verdict for Casey Anthony in her first-degree murder trial was read, I have seen that it is not just the fault of the media; they might be the ones holding up the funhouse mirror, but we’re the ones who are accepting that reflection as truth.

As a Florida native who has been exposed to coverage of the death of Caylee Anthony since she was considered a missing person, I get the frustration and anger that the general public feels about yesterday’s verdict. Nobody wants to believe that a mother could murder her own adorable daughter, but everybody was waiting to place blame somewhere so that the little girl could rest in peace and the country could move on. Plus, how could Casey not be blamed for it? The lies. The Google searches. The stench. The hot body contest. All of us maintained that our justice system would serve Casey Anthony right and that the truth of the circumstances surrounding Caylee’s disappearance and subsequent death would come to light. Yet, when it was announced that the jury did not have enough evidence to, beyond reasonable doubt, declare Casey Anthony guilty of first-degree murder, suddenly the justice system was worthless and those conventions that have prevented innocent men and women from being assumed guilty and sent to death row were considered matters of red tape that are letting a cold-blooded killer walk. And the media turbines keep spinning and spinning and suddenly we’re mesmerized. It has to stop. Now.

How about we all take a step back from our fixation with the Orlando Witch Trial and look at this with a little deductive reasoning? The jury unanimously found Casey Anthony not guilty of first degree murder. The general public and the media pretty clearly feel that Casey Anthony is guilty of first-degree murder. We all live-streamed the proceedings on CNN.com, so we heard all that the jury heard. We all read the paper every morning, so we saw the same evidence that the jury saw. So how is it possible that there is such a glaring difference in how the people and the jury feel? The fact is that there is only one differentiating factor between how the general public and the jury were exposed to the case: access to popular media.

I wouldn’t dare say that I didn’t indulge in the media banter surrounding Casey Anthony’s trial. I too read CNN religiously to catch up on the latest developments in the story and I loved listening to the insight provided by lawyers, forensic experts, etc. on The Today Show and HLN. Yet, for some reason, it appears as though I was the only one who did all of this without becoming an opinionated zombie. Maybe this is because I have been educated in journalism, specifically broadcast journalism, so I was aware of the inherent bias in story and guest selection. Or perhaps it’s because I’m the type of person who has an entire blog devoted to the need to consider all sides of a circumstance before passing judgment. Yet, regardless, the fact that I was practically standing alone in my expression of acceptance of the jury’s findings yesterday is terrifying to me. When did we get so closed minded? When did we get so self-righteous? Just because Nancy Grace thinks that she can make her own little court with brainwashed viewers as a phone-in jury and well-paid professionals with no connection to the case as expert witnesses doesn’t mean that we have to anoint ourselves as judges too. We are all subject to the same justice system that Casey Anthony was subject to and I can’t imagine that anyone else out there would like to leave their fate to a popular vote. The law is the law and our judicial procedures are sound. If you have a problem with the fact that a person cannot be convicted unless the jury determines their guilt beyond reasonable doubt and with suitable evidence, then protest our system as a whole or live elsewhere.

A side note: Something that makes me blush almost as much as the second-hand embarrassment I experienced while reading other people’s personal Twitter rants yesterday is the fact that we let this trial get as big as it did. Casey Anthony was not a star athlete who had already established her news-worthiness through her past accolades like OJ Simpson had. She was just another young mother who made some bad decisions, lied to authorities and perhaps murdered her daughter. According to the book Parenthood and Mental Health: A Bridge Between Infant and Adult Psychiatry by Sam Tyano, Miri Keren, Helen Herrman, John Cox, 61% of children under the age of five who were murdered between 1975-2000 were killed by one of their parents. Thus we cannot attribute the excessive media attention placed on Casey Anthony’s trial to the unique circumstance that a mother was accused of killing her child because the circumstance really was not all that unique. Looking back on the last few "It-Crimes" (Scott Petersen, Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, etc.) you have to wonder why only a few of these person-disappears-suspect-denies-it-big-trial-ensues situations have dominated cable news crime coverage in the past decade despite the absurd statistics about how often this actually happens in our country. But really there are only two ways to comprehend it; either we accept that we are all pre-disposed to Salem-Witch-Trial Syndrome or we go the sexier route and blame the news: Selection. Selection. Selection.

I know how important the media is to democracy and freedom. I cherish the access to information that we have as a result of the hard work of the hundreds of passionate, insightful and curious news reporters and producers out there. However, with the power the journalism industry has comes an even greater responsibility: to inform without bias in selection, content or exposure. Far too many members of the media came dangerously close to ignoring this responsibility during the Casey Anthony trial. And as much as it pains me to agree with anything said by the defense team, I do hope that the world of journalism learned a lesson from the trial's outcome.