Founder of Court TV: We Need to Examine America’s Culture of Armchair Justice

Trial by Media, a documentary series on Netflix that premiered on May 11, does its best to explore the impact of cable TV on the U.S. justice system. During hourlong segments, the show examines six trials whose outcomes were arguably shaped by the media and the court of public opinion. There’s the 1985 case of “Subway Vigilante” Bernhard Goetz, who shot four black youths he says he thought were going to mug him on the New York subway, and more recently, the 2009 bribery trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Each episode includes clips from the original TV coverage, ominous shots of the crime scenes, and a stream of talking heads who provide context and a veneer of scholarly analysis. It is, in other words, not so distant from the true-crime TV genre it claims to critique.