The real verdict in the Michael Jackson case........

......The Cable Tabloid Networks are guilty as charged.

Cable TV's crystal balls get cracked

If you hang around a courthouse long enough, one of the things you learn is that people willing to predict a jury's verdict are the sort who take stock tips from their barbers.

These days, however, the news organizations most preoccupied with sensational trials are the cable television news outlets, and they are creatures of appetite rather than principle or even brute experience. Their sets may be crammed with more lawyers and shrinks than a Beverly Hills office building, but the constant references to their alleged expertise notwithstanding, they're basically there as shills to lure more suckers into the tent.

So how did the shills do?

On Court TV, which routinely uses everything but card stunts to cheer on the prosecution in whatever case it's covering, those onetime prosecutors turned Valkyrie anchors, Nancy Grace and Kimberly Guilfoyle, unhesitatingly predicted conviction.

Over on CNN ? that's big CNN, the one that's still mostly respectable ? defense attorney Robert Shapiro flatly stated, "He's going to be convicted." (Of course, he also thought O.J. Simpson was going to be convicted ? and Simpson was Shapiro's client.)

Meanwhile, the analysts on MSNBC hedged their bets a bit by parsing the various combinations of conviction and acquittal Jackson might receive.

No equivocation at Fox, though, where former prosecutor Wendy Murphy confidently predicted "there is no question we will see convictions here."

So what happened when Jackson was acquitted on all counts? Red faces? Second thoughts? A little soul-searching, perhaps? Maybe one expression of regret for the rush to judgment?

Naaawww.

The reaction, instead, was rage liberally laced with contempt and the odd puzzled expression. Its targets were the jurors.

In my opinion:

1. Michael Jackson was probably guilty

and
2. The jurors came up with the correct verdict.

We have a little thing in our legal system called reasonable doubt and how could you not have reasonable doubt when the accusers were all known pathological liars?

As for the shills on TV; they were doing what they are paid to do. Tell an angry audience what they want to hear and then fan the indignation when things don't turn out the way they predicted.

Please don't call FOX, CNN and MSNBC "news" networks. Call them what they are, Cable Tabloid Networks.

Note
The most vile of the vile legal shills has to be that angry white woman, Nancy Grace. For a complete run down on her head over to Balloon Juice where John Cole has taken her to task on several occasions.