By Kevin Brass
American Journalism Review
Published on 4/2/2004
Excerpt:
“In today’s thinly staffed newsrooms, you know you’re going to come out of [a trial event] with a story,” says Al Tompkins, a former TV news executive now at The Poynter Institute. “It’s a low-hanging-fruit kind of story.” …
In fact, media observers say that the constant legal discussion, even in the context of a celebrity case, does have educational value. “We’re a country that understands our legal system through the snapshots of these trials quilted together,” Tompkins says. “People understand the system much better than when the only court that they saw was ‘Perry Mason.’ ”
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