Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trial By Media’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About Famous Cases That Were Affected By Massive Media Coverage

Trial By Media is a docuseries that takes a look at various famous cases over the past 40 years that have been greatly affected by the media circuses that were built around them. What the series is out to show is how the media can not only influence how a case is perceived, but media may be the engine that generates the events in the case to begin with. Jeffrey Toobin and Steven Brill (who founded Court TV) are the executive producers, as are George Clooney and Grant Heslov.

TRIAL BY MEDIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a VCR connected to a receiver and a TV, “PLAY” is on the display. On The TV, we see a scene from a ’90s daytime talk show where someone’s secret is revealed: “HE ONLY HAS ONE TESTICLE!”

The Gist: The episodes in the series, helmed by various directors, examines cases like the Bernard Goetz case in 1980’s New York, the “Big Dan’s” rape case that inspired the film The Accused, the Amadou Diallo case, the Rod Blaghojevich case and the Richard Scrushy case.

But the first episode examines the famous “Jenny Jones murder” and how the crazy daytime talk show wars of the 1990s may have had a hand in the case, as well as the circus that was built around both the criminal and civil trials it generated. In 1995, Scott Amedure was shot to death by Jonathan Schmitz four days after taping an episode of Jenny Jones where it was revealed to Schmitz that Amedure had a crush on him. During the segment before Schmitz was called out from backstage, Amedure was asked by Jones about what his fantasies about Schmitz were, and then she played them back after Schmitz came out. While he seemed a bit chagrined and uncomfortable on camera, there didn’t seem to be any indication that he’d do what happened four days later.

While Jones and Schmitz, who was released from prison in 2017, refused to be interviewed, the episode’s director, Tony Yacenda, got interviews with many others who were involved. Among them are Amedure’s brother Frank; celebrity attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who represented the Amedure family in their lawsuit against Jenny Jones producer Warner Brothers; WB’s defense attorney; and the defense attorney of Schmitz, who managed to get him a 2nd-degree murder conviction when it seemed to be a clear case of 1st-degree, premeditated murder.

Our Take: As with most docuseries of this type, your enjoyment of Trial By Media will vary from episode to episode, but will also vary with how much you know and remember about a particular episode’s case. But what Toobin and Brill are trying to accomplish is noble; they’re basically examining their own role, as members of the media who were instrumental in the intensifying of coverage of cases like this, starting in the mid-’80s, in how the course of these sensational cases were changed by media coverage.

The Jenny Jones case is particularly interesting because we start with the discussion of how slimy and exploitative daytime talk shows had gotten by the time of Amedure’s murder in 1995, but no matter how slimy, could a talk show be responsible for someone killing someone else? To be sure, there were other factors involved in the murder than just Schmitz’s humiliation at being told a male friend had a crush on him; he was bipolar and had Graves’ disease, plus he grew up with a father who was virulently homophobic and had questioned his son’s sexuality many times. But was all of that triggered, or at least kindled, by the appearance on the Jenny Jones show?

It’s an interesting question, and we wish that Yacenda had the chance to talk to Jones about her role in this incident and if, 25 years later, she has any regrets. Sure, we get a lot of insight as we see her dead-eyed stare on the stand of the civil trial as Figer slowly tears her down bit by bit. But the only person from the show who was there to defend it was the defense attorney hired by Warner Brothers. Everyone else from the show is shown via Court TV footage of the trials.

That’s the other rub of this series. The rise of Court TV in the ’90s drove a lot of the media frenzy around the sensational trials of the period, and, while the channel is left open for criticism — Frank Amedure was especially galled that Warner Brothers, who owned Court TV in the late ’90s, was going to profit off the civil trial as they were getting sued by his family — we’re wondering if having Brill as an EP will allow the series to truly dive into the channel’s influence. Sure, there were media circuses before Court TV was founded; we’ll see that with the Bernie Goetz and “Big Dan’s” cases. But Court TV made those media circuses into daily soap operas, attracting hundreds of thousands of viewers and making attorneys like Figer into media stars. A little self-examination is in order here, and we hope that subsequent episodes will show will explore that.

Parting Shot: Frank Amedure was asked what he thought Scott would be doing if he was still alive. “Probably working with you guys,” he says. “He loved this stuff.”

Sleeper Star: Figer always knows when he has to be “on,” even during the interview he gave for the episode. The man studied drama in college and it feels like he modeled his style based on every lawyer show he saw on TV, both before and after getting his law license. His closing argument in the civil trial sounded like it came from an episode of Law & Order.

Most Pilot-y Line: While describing the ratings-at-any-cost mentality of daytime talk shows, we see an interview with Phil Donahue about why he had an episode with male strippers. Comparing Phil Donahue’s show to Jerry Springer’s or Jenny Jones’ show is like comparing apples to rotten apples; while Phil’s show had its wild moments, it’s unfair to group it with the others.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Whether you know the details from a case in a particular Trial By Media‘s episode or not, you’ll appreciate the filmmakers’ efforts to examine just what influence the media had on those cases, in both obvious and hidden ways.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Trial By Media On Netflix