For the first time in U.S. history, television news anchors delivered the news to an anxious American public that a former president has been convicted of a crime.
Major broadcast networks interrupted regular programming and cable news networks that had been vamping through two days of jury deliberations in New York shifted into high gear when word came of a verdict late Thursday afternoon.
Within seconds of the jury making its announcement, CNN and MSNBC anchors read out the guilty verdicts for all 34 charges, using on-screen graphics to keep tallies of the jury’s decisions. (MSNBC took credit for beating CNN by 42 seconds and Fox News by more than a minute.)
CNN’s Jake Tapper called it “an incredibly consequential day in the history of the United States,” while MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow described it as “an irreducible verdict.”
Advertisem*nt
Skip to end of carousel
The Style section
Style is where The Washington Post covers happenings on the front lines of culture and what it all means, including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion, all told with personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories, click here.
End of carousel
“This is everything the prosecution asked for, from a jury that by all accounts took this thing very, very seriously,” she added.
On Fox News, where Trump-friendly commentators have criticized prosecutors for bringing the case, anchors did not go count-by-count, instead relaying word from network producers that Trump was convicted on all charges.
“It’s a historic trial of a former president of the United States, by his partisan adversaries,” Fox News legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy said. “Whatever you think of the results, it’s inconceivable in New York that anyone else other than Donald Trump would have been indicted in this way.”
Ahead of the announcement, NBC, CBS and ABC preempted scheduled programming on local stations around the country.
The television coverage lacked some of the drama of other big court cases, since the courts did not allow the trial to be broadcast, part of a broader slate of restrictions on media access.
Instead of hearing the ruling from the jury, television viewers had it relayed to them via correspondents in the courthouse.
ABC anchor David Muir interrupted correspondent Aaron Katersky as the verdicts started coming in from the network’s crew in the courthouse. “Standby, Aaron,” he said. “Standby.”
On NBC, correspondent Laura Jarrett yelled, “Guys, we need to go!” as the news came in to read. NBC host Savannah Guthrie called it “a total rejection of the defendants’ case.”
On CBS, anchor Norah O’Donnell paused for a few seconds after finishing her reading of the verdicts to take in the enormity of the decision. “This is an extraordinary moment,” she said.
“Norah, to hear you read what you just read is a moment of enormous gravity for this country,” correspondent Major Garrett said, calling it “not just a legal moment for this country, not just a political moment for this country, it is a moment where everything about politics and law and our orientation to both are convulsed as never before.”
Advertisem*nt
Following the decision, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all carried Trump’s remarks in the court’s hallway about what he called “a rigged decision.”
For most of Thursday, cable news personalities had debated when a verdict might come, with on-screen graphics keeping track of how long deliberations had taken and guests repeatedly asked how to interpret the length of the discussions.
At the top of the 4 p.m. hour, about 30 minutes before the jury delivered notice of a verdict, CNN’s Tapper asked correspondent Paula Reid about the state of the deliberations.
“We know nothing, Jake,” Reid said. “We know absolutely nothing.”
On other networks, guests and hosts found various ways to convey the nature of the exercise.
“It’s like waiting for a baby,” one-time Trump attorney William Brennan said on Fox News on Thursday afternoon, while MSNBC commentator Andrew Weissmann likened it to “Groundhog Day.”
Advertisem*nt
On Thursday morning, anchors on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC shifted to the edge of their upholstered chairs upon the news that jurors had passed a note to the judge. It turned out that they merely wanted to hear the judge’s instructions again and get headphones to listen to evidence.
On-screen graphics kept viewers updated on small developments in the trial in the absence of live footage from the courtroom.
CNN’s last on-screen update before the big news came at 5:06 p.m., telling viewers that the jury’s foreperson “says they have reached a verdict.”
