Loving Casey Anthony in a culture of vengeance

I couldn’t bear to watch any of the coverage of the Casey Anthony murder
trial. I heard snippets of information on occasion: intimations of
incest; a car that “smelled of death”; fist fights breaking out as the
curious and obsessed (the profoundly bored?) tried to get a seat in the
Florida courtroom. These revelations were not only dreadful but disheartening. Why do people seek out such bad, sad news? Why
do they find such vicarious pleasure (what else could it be? they keep
going back for more) in the misery of others?

One answer is that cable TV sucks viewers in with their
round-the-clock coverage of sensational news stories. Indeed, on-air
personalities like Nancy Grace don’t merely report the latest happenings in a case like Casey Anthony’s (they wouldn’t be able to fill 24 hours of BREAKING NEWS! if that’s all they did); rather, they help to manufacture the “news” they want us to consume.

There’s been plenty of criticism in the last couple of days of the
pundits who have pronounced on this case for the last three years and,
especially, for the last few days. The conventional wisdom throughout
the trial seems to have been that Anthony would be convicted–that even
though it was a circumstantial case it was a powerful one. When the
verdict was read on Tuesday the dropped jaws of said pundits became as
newsworthy as the the jury’s surprise decision. (Again, cable TV creating the news it must then report).