A New Netflix Series Worth Watching

Netflix is not usually a good source for TV or movies, but Trial by Media is an exception. Each episode is a short documentary on a criminal trial with media coverage so massive that it affected the outcome. Race is a prominent factor most of the time. Along with media bias, the series shows the influence of activists — more than one episode includes  Al Sharpton — and dishonest lawyers. The lawyers shocked me more than anything else. They are unashamed about manipulating juries, playing on racial resentment, and they delight in hoodwinking average people. In episode four, about HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy’s trial for fraud, the defendant’s black attorney smirks as he remembers telling Mr. Scrushy to start making charitable donations to black organizations and churches. That way, at jury selection, his legal team can pick blacks knowing they will already have a good impression of him.

Whites in the United States increasingly face anarcho-tyranny, dishonest “news,” and a legal system stacked against them. Trial by Media covers all of this thoroughly and with an even tone. The people who made it probably weren’t trying to alert Americans, especially white ones, to how common injustice is, but viewers are likely to conclude that there is an awful lot of it. And the more people understand this, the better.

I especially recommend these episodes:

• #2, “Subway Vigilante,” about Bernhard Goetz.
• #3, “41 Shots,” about the shooting of a black immigrant by four police officers in 1999
• #4, “King Richard,” about the Richard Scrushy case