The repercussions of the courtroom’s continued convergence with the media are explored in the new trailer for the upcoming Netflix docuseries, Trial By Media, set to premiere May 11th.
Each episode of the series will delve into a different trial that attracted huge amounts of media coverage, and how the lawyers, plaintiffs and defendants all tried to use the cameras to turn a win in the court of public opinion into a win in actual court.
“I’m not saying the trial’s a theater but the court of public opinion is very important,” says one talking head in the new trailer. “Because if everybody in the building likes these guys, they must be the good guys, right?”
Trial By Media will highlight such courtroom dramas as the story of disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of essentially trying to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate seat after he was elected president (President Donald Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence earlier this year).
Other episodes will focus on Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African man who was shot 41 times by the New York Police Department; the murder of Scott Amedure and its ties to the tabloid talk show, The Jenny Jones Show; and the infamous “subway vigilante,” Bernhard Goetz, who claimed self-defense after shooting four black teenagers on a New York City subway in 1984.
