Celebrity Trials in the Media

Plot Summary

Celebrity Trials in the Media confronts one of the most pressing issues facing the modern television news business today - the need to deliver big ratings that drive advertising revenue - and a new definition of 'news'. Celebrity trials are big business, and when the news media comes to town to cover sensational cases, lives are changed and ethical barriers are shattered. If a celebrity is involved, an otherwise unnoticed case of drunk driving, insider trading, rape, or even murder gets more national and local coverage than the real news of the day. Director Brian Malone was granted unprecedented access to the journalists scrambling to cover the rape trial of Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant in 2004. From his behind-the-scenes vantage point in the tiny town of Eagle, Colorado where the trial took place, Malone captures a pivotal moment in the news-gathering business - when celebrity justice became a staple of reality television. The same year, the child molestation trial of singer Michael Jackson in Santa Maria, California, saw 1,800 journalists take extraordinary efforts to report on little but the screaming throngs of fans and footage of Jackson and his entourage entering and leaving the courthouse. In Celebrity Trials in the Media, notable news reporters candidly share the challenges and ethical dilemmas that arise when the camera lights go on and the deadline to deliver a compelling news story, nearly 24 hours/7 days a week, arrives.