Courthouse Coverage, A National Tradition
by Charles Bierbauer/CNN
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Eric Newton
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WASHINGTON (Aug. 7) -- If you think the courtside circus surrounding Monica Lewinsky's grand jury appearance in Washington marks a new dimension in press and public frenzy, think again.
The technology might have changed, but curiosity is nothing new to sensational cases.
Washington's district court is like a giant magnet . The media was drawn Thursday by the irresistible attraction of Lewinsky's testimony. So was the public. Some came to support the former White House intern, some to vilify the president.
"When you put the right person together with the right allegations, you have something that captures the public interest," Newseum Managing Editor Eric Newton commented.
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William Kennedy Smith
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Celebrity, sex, race, wealth and murder combined to create the O.J. Simpson sensation.
The sexual assault trial of William Kennedy Smith was compelling because of who he was, a Kennedy elite.
The national horror at his crime drew massive coverage of Timothy McVeigh's trial.
The growth in media has contributed to the volume of coverage.
But the scope is really nothing new.
"It's all been done before in different media or in different times," said Newton.
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A courtroom sketch artist drew
this picture of Lizzie Borden
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When aviator Charles Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped in 1932, radio was the hot medium. Seven hundred reporters covered the 1935 trial of accused kidnapper Bruno Hauptman in Flemington, New Jersey.
In 1925, the legal giants Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan drew massive coverage to the Scopes "monkey" trial and the controversy of teaching evolution.
The 1892 ax-murder trial of Lizzie Borden predated television and radio, but not courtroom sketches.
"It's almost exactly the kind of story play that you saw 100 years later, when O.J. Simpson was found innocent in the first trial," Newton said.
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The execution of Ruth Snyder
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But for sheer media audacity, little beats the 1928 case of Ruth Snyder, convicted of killing her husband.
"The New York Daily News snuck into the execution to take a hidden camera picture of her at the moment of her electrocution, so that the public could see the most sensational criminal justice picture ever taken," Newton explained.
What has changed? Less than you might think.
The technology is different. But the courtroom curiosity is still the same.
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