The Media

 Posted on October 16, 2009 in Uncategorized

I got to deal with Channel 2, Channel 11, Channel 13, The Houston Chronicle, and Channel 26 this week.

One one case, I gave the first four the choice of getting video of my client and me walking to or from court, or getting a statement from me. They chose the pictures. I can't really blame them. We can manage to do our respective jobs (theirs: putting together sensationalist news; mine: protecting my clients) without antagonizing each other, and if some day I have some interesting message to convey, I might talk to Channels 2, 11, 13, or the Chron.

Not so Channel 26. On another case (one that the other media outlets had zero interest in), they jumped us outside the courtroom, shoving camera and microphone in our faces and asking for comment on this and that. They got nothing, except probably some pokerfaced footage of a sick-looking sweaty lawyer (I've been fighting some bug) with bad hair and his cool client... oh, and some dude jumped on the elevator with us shouting that it "was bullshit"; I don't think that's newsworthy.

Channel 26 shouldn't have chosen ambush over respect.

These are not my first high-publicity cases, and it's highly unlikely that they'll be my last. I usually work hard to turn high-publicity cases into low-publicity cases, but sometimes making a comment to the press will be unavoidable, or even beneficial. You guys from the other stations will just have to send Channel 26 away. (It won't be hard-just tell them they're giving away sex offender lists in the basement. They eat that stuff up.)