ESPN analyst discusses media's impact on high-profile cases

Matthew McConkey
Daily Egyptian

ESPN analyst Roger Cossack said the expansion of cable news programs, such as MSNBC, FOX NEWS and Court TV, has altered the way Americans see and understand high-profile cases. Cossack pioneered the art of legal analysis. Cossack, who spoke to a large crowd Tuesday evening at Lesar Law Auditorium, said he has watched trial analyses go from showing the public both sides of the trial to making it more sensational and less informative.

"They are no longer objective but subjective," he said. In today's media, there is an ever-growing need to "feed the beast," Cossack said. News companies are in a profit-making business, and vivid stories sell, Cossack said. "Nobody is out there to lose money," he said. "Ratings are what income is based on."

Cossack said legal analysts in today's media are touting beliefs rather than explaining to the audience how high-profile cases work, which makes for outlandish headlines and erratic opinions. Art Powers, a retired assistant judge, said reporters like Nancy Grace, an anchor for CNN who hypothesize on trial results, are examples of bad, lurid journalism. "Anyone on TV speculating the outcome, I think, is not a helpful activity," Powers said.

Cossack said the ratings hunt came around when CNN started airing the "trial of the century," also known as the O.J. Simpson trial. O.J. Simpson had a perfect storm of elements surrounding his trial, Cossack said. He was a sports hero, an advertiser for Hertz and a beloved figure in Los Angeles. At the time, CNN was the only 24-hour news coverage program on cable television. It was hard to have news running day in and day out, so the O.J. trial helped feed the news cycle.

"Americans, being somewhat voyeuristic, wanted to see it," Cossack said. The nature of the trial pulled Cossack into the legal analysis on television. At the time, Cossack was a private practicing attorney. He wanted to change jobs, and after an article about the Simpson trial with his quotes ran in the New York Times, his life of practicing law was pretty much over, Cossack said. Within weeks, Cossack was on Nightline with Ted Koppel and Good Morning America. Some time later, CNN was calling on him to discuss the trial. Six weeks later, his salary averaged $750 a day.

Cossack said CNN's ratings were higher than the Persian Gulf War. "CNN has never had such high ratings than the O.J. Simpson case," Cossack said. He also said this same uproar has also leaked into the jurors' box. After the Simpson trial, Cossack said, two jurors wrote books based on their trial experiences.

These "celebrity jurors," Cossack said, have a scheme to make money from trials they participate in, which is another problem rooted from sensational journalism. "The notion that we are going to have jurors with agendas is scary," Cossack said.