SummaryThe six-part documentary series looks into the impact media coverage may have had on high profile cases including the murder of Scott Amedure, who was on The Jenny Jones Show; federal corruption charges against ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, and the death of an unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by the NYPD.
Trial by Media
Season 1 Premiere:
May 11, 2020
Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
User score
Mixed or Average
4.8
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All Seasons
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
71% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
29% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
May 8, 2020
88
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.
May 7, 2020
80
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.
May 11, 2020
75
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.
Jun 24, 2020
70
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.
May 11, 2020
63
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.
May 12, 2020
50
What "Trial by Media" does exceptionally well is distill, in under an hour, the "big takeaways" from each episode. It's similar in format to Netflix's "Dirty Money." ... The series is missing an overarching synthesis about how or why viewers should reinterrogate their relationship with crime and court television, especially in the age of true crime.
May 7, 2020
50
At no point in the elegantly structured, deeply researched docuseries does the creators’ point of view come into focus. ... What’s missing is synthesis. Each episode tracks how attorneys, activists and other interested parties interact with the media. Sometimes, it’s illuminating. ... More often, causes and effects remain fuzzy. The series neither creates a timeline nor makes an overarching argument.
User score
Mixed or Average
4.8
50% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
25% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
25% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
May 24, 2020
4
So I was really expecting this documentary to expand out into how the media over all covers and shows a big or popular court case, unforunately, it didn't. So did it then at least cover the media at the time of the trial, how it was portrayed, how much was it on tv, and other such questions? Barely. "Trial By Media" just seems like an empty documentary that doesn't really go into detail about anything and just tells the story of what happened in this particular case. Maybe it was misdescribed but this was my thought on it.
