- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: May 11, 2020
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Critic Reviews
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Though “Trial by Media” is about some of the most widely covered, hot-button cases of the last half-century, the tone is somber, reflective and fact-based, heavy on archival footage and present-day interviews with individuals who were connected to the stories on one side of the camera or the other.
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Trial by Media is consistently efficient, eloquent and free of formal gimmickry. Nonetheless, it stumbles slightly—in terms of its overarching goal—with its installment on Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant who in February 1999 was shot 41 times by four NYPD officers, if only because there’s a tenuous link between the media’s coverage of that incident and the not-guilty verdicts that were eventually handed down to the indicted. More coherent is the series’ critique of letting cameras into the courtroom.
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The new six-episode Netflix nonfiction anthology “Trial by Media” constitutes good, solid recappery in the realm of true crime and 50 shades of quality in the world of press coverage of high-profile legal sweepstakes.
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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.
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At times unfocused, Netflix’s latest docuseries “Trial by Media” struggles to bring its six stories together under the same umbrella but contains enough insight to warrant a look and possibly spark conversation.