Cable's power can set agenda
Casey Anthony is a highly unlikely person to become a household name.
How is it that a Florida murder case, while certainly sensational, has become a staple of conversation and news coverage from coast to coast?
Once again, the stunning power of the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet — and their hunger for stories to fill that daunting amount of time — is on display. Purely local stories become national news. Put the story on cable day after day, and, pretty soon, it's a topic of national discussion.
The OJ murder case set the standard for this kind of wall-to-wall coverage.
But he, at least, was a legitimate celebrity — a former college and professional football star turned movie and TV star. Casey Anthony is a 25-year-old high school dropout who lived with her parents and her now-deceased toddler.
An obviously troubled young woman, she is now a notorious individual faced with, so the story goes, a difficult, but possibly, lucrative future.
Her story, which she is now expected to sell, has been fodder for cable television coverage since 2008, when authorities began searching for her missing 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony later was charged with the child's murder but last week, to the consternation and rage of many, she was found not guilty of the crime.
Convicted only of lying to police, Anthony is scheduled to be released July 16 after nearly three years in custody.
Meanwhile, angry citizens are showing up at the county courthouse in Orlando carrying signs that range from calling for the arrest of Anthony's jurors to marriage proposals for Anthony.
The overreaction borders on the bizarre. As disgusting as the facts of this case are, almost as disturbing is the public focus on it. But that's the unfortunate reality, and it's not likely to change soon.
Given the right script — apparently heartless but attractive mother, innocent child victim initially missing and later found dead, investigation, trial and verdict — the cable networks can't get enough. Sparked on by furious commentary from the Nancy Graces of the world, it all becomes a combustible mix that cannot be ignored and feeds into society's and the media's short attention span.
In another week, the story will be worn out, and people will be on to something else.
Mix it with politics; and you get FOX cable. Just another Rupert Murdock company that feeds the public with Propaganda 101 news. There is money to be made influencing the public; and protecting the Rich. With two wars, the recession, the current mess with the deficit politics, and the states going broke; the American public is engrossed, and enraged with a jury decision. All we need now is for Timmy to fall down a well while Lassie is chasing a rabbit.
It used to be that television newsrooms were not intended to be the profit driven machines that they are now. As a result, we see situations such as the Casey Anthony trial, and the Laci Peterson case grab headlines. The location of both cases are also influential. If the Casey Anthony trial had occurred in a remote area in Nebraska, no one would give a damn. However, Florida is close enough to major news bureaus to grab national attention. The same can be said of California.
Instead of trained journalists you have 'personalities' like Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, and other people who are paid to generate ratings and bring in advertising revenue. The reason why Fox got rid of Beck is because he is no longer bringing in the advertising dollars. It's a classic capitalistic golden rule, if you have the gold, you can make the rules.
One of the things that cable programming has also done is driven the genre of 'reality' television. It's far cheaper to produce a reality show, or shows like American Idol, than it is to invest in a sitcom or drama that may not even be picked up beyond a few pilot episodes. If we didn't have cable we would never have been exposed to Anna Nicole Smith, or the Kardashian family. It's a minimal investment that can generate big rewards. If the show fails in the ratings then it's not much of a loss.
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