Media drop everything to cover Amanda Knox verdict

The Cutline

It wasn't quite on the level of the media frenzy surrounding the O.J. Simpson verdict, but the press collectively stopped whatever else it was doing to cover the verdict in the Amanda Knox murder trial on Monday, as an Italian court overturned a murder conviction and cleared the American college student of the charges against her. The court's decision returns Knox into U.S. custody.

The media scrum surrounding the Knox verdict certainly rivaled the attention paid to Casey Anthony, the "tot mom" acquitted of murder charges in Florida earlier this year.

All three networks broke into regularly scheduled programming around 3:45 p.m. ET to air the verdict. (Yahoo! streamed the ABC feed, as part of its new partnership with ABC News.) CNN, MSNBC and Fox News carried the verdict live on air and online, too.

Knox, not surprisingly, became the top trend ("#amandaknox") on Twitter, just below #HeresTheBeef, a paid advertisement promoting Wendy's hamburgers.

On the Web, though, the race to be the first to report the Knox news proved tricky for at least two major media outlets. The U.K.'s Daily Mail prepared a version of its story to run with the assumption that Knox would be found guilty, but accidentally ran it anyway under the headline, "Guilty: Amanda Knox collapses in tears as appeal against murder conviction is rejected."

The publication eventually replaced the story with the correct one under the banner, "FOXY GOES FREE."

The Guardian's liveblog initially made a similar error. (It's possible that the British press were using a bad translator, as the verdict was read in Italian from the Perugia, Italy court. A bad translation, combined with Knox's tears, could have fooled anyone.)

As had been the case with the Anthony verdict, news outlets are now furiously competing to score the first sit-down interview with Knox, once she returns to her home in Seattle. NBC seemed to be lobbying for that sort of exclusive when it sent Matt Lauer to Perugia last week to interview Knox's young sisters, who had traveled to Italy to visit their sister.