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Stenberg and Holland, rightIn 1990, the venerated New Yorker
writer Janet Malcolm published The
Journalist and the Murderer, a chronicle
of a convicted murderer’s lawsuit against
the author he’d trusted to tell his story.
Controversial for its era, the book frames
journalism as a game of “seduction and
betrayal,” in which the reporter inevita-
bly turns on the subject. Yet over three
subsequent decades that saw the rise,
first, of Court TV and hyper partisan
cable news, and then of digital and social
media, it became a standard journalism-
school text. A corrective to the assump-
tion reportage is an inherently righteous
calling, it now reads as common sense.
Yet Malcolm largely ignored the op-
posite scenario, in which a journalist, or
the media at large, becomes the pawn of
a subject—or lawyer—intent on winning
in the so-called court of public opinion.
Netflix’s Trial by Media—whose execu-
tive producers include George Clooney,
Court TV founder Steven Brill and Mal-
colm’s New Yorker colleague Jeffrey
Toobin—seems more concerned about
the latter form of manipulation. I say
“seems” because at no point in the el-
egantly structured, deeply researched
docuseries does the creators’ point of
view come into focus.REVIEW
A smart Trial that never reaches a verdictThe six-part anthology revisits a dif-
ferent legal saga in each episode, from ra-
cially charged tragedies like 1984’s “sub-
way vigilante” case to the darkly comic
2008 downfall of then Illinois governor
Rod Blagojevich. Skillful interviews
draw out such memorable characters as
Geoffrey Fieger, the showboating law-
yer who helmed a wrongful-death suit
against The Jenny Jones Show. An empa-
thetic episode on Amadou Diallo, the un-
armed African immigrant who was shot
to death by the NYPD in 1999, centers on
his mother Kadijatou, whose rude awak-
ening to racism in America launched a
lifetime of activism.
What’s missing is synthesis. Each epi-
sode tracks how attorneys, activists and
other interested parties interact with
the media. Sometimes it’s illuminating;
Apprentice alum Blagojevich rides a tab-
loid roller coaster to a presidential com-
mutation catalyzed by his wife’s appear-
ances on Fox News. More often, cause
and effect remains fuzzy. The series
neither creates a timeline nor makes an
overarching argument. We’re left won-
dering: When journalists are in thrall to
murderers, what is to be done? —J.B.TRIAL BY MEDIA comes to Netflix on May 11REVIEW
From City of Stars
to City of LightDamien Chazelle—like
Ryan Gosling’s character in
Chazelle’s hit musical La La
Land—is on a mission to make
jazz cool again. Now the direc-
tor brings his crusade to Netflix
with The Eddy, a miniseries as
meandering, diverse and resis-
tant to traditional structures as
the wildest jam session.
Set at the titular scruffy
Paris jazz club, the bilingual
show opens at a rough moment
for owner Elliot (Moonlight’s
André Holland). The Eddy is
in financial trouble, Elliot’s
business partner (Tahar
Rahim) is taking desperate
measures, and his troubled
teen daughter (a delightfully
bratty Amandla Stenberg) is
coming from America to live
with him.
There’s a crime drama
brewing, but Chazelle is in
no rush. He detours to follow
other characters, from the
proprietors’ families to the
Eddy’s international house
band. Music abounds, in
lengthy performances of
original songs that, sadly, feel
too generic for the gritty setting
and vérité camera work. At first,
my eyes glazed over. But have
patience (a tall order these
days), and you’ll be rewarded
with episodes that mix music
with daily life, and global
cultures with one another, as
artfully as veteran improvisers
showing off their chops. —J.B.THE EDDY hits Netflix on May 8△
I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE: HBO; NETFLIX (2) “Subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz’s history of racist statements came out in court