Acquitted Anthony Retains 'Her Story' in Settlement with Bankruptcy Trustee

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U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida Judge K. Rodney May has accepted an agreement between Trustee Stephen L. Meininger and Casey Anthony concerning the disposition of the rights of her life story involving her 2011 acquittal in the trial for the murder of two-year-old Caylee Anthony, whose remains were discovered in December 2008.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the 27-year-old Anthony, who filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last January citing $792k in debt, will pay $25,000 to the bankruptcy estate and put to rest any struggle over whether her story constitutes an asset.  Last March, Meininger asked the Court for "exclusive worldwide rights" to Anthony's story as an asset to satisfy creditors, but withdrew his motion two months later. Anthony's attorneys, according to the Sentinel article, claimed compelling the sale of Anthony's story violated her First Amendment rights and would be invasive of her private thoughts.

Anthony has maintained a low profile since the around-the-clock cable tv coverage of her highly charged trial.

AP Staffers Taken to Woodshed for Social Media Opining

Image via CrunchBaseAssociated Press reporters weighing in on news stories such as the Casey Anthony murder trial and the New York legislature's thumbs-up to same-sex marriage have been taken to task by the wire service for sharing their views on Twitter.

According to Romanesko's media gossip column, Tom Kent, AP Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production, said AP staffers sharing their opinions with friends and family via Tweets undermine the credibility of AP reporters trying to cover controversial news stories in an objective, balanced manner. Sounding a bit "wired," Kent reminded AP staffers that social networks are a public forum and not the proper outlet for sharing personal views about contentious news events. Apparently, that's why wire service bureaus and newspapers are never located more than a stone's throw from  hanging fern-free dive bars.

ABC News: A New Low in Checkbook Journalism in Anthony Case

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Four months after two-year-old Caylee Anthony of Orlando, Fla., disappeared in June 2008, a Grand Jury handed down a first-degree murder charge against the toddler's mother, Casey Anthony. The toddler's remains were discovered  in December 2008.

The tragedy continues to unfold in a Florida courtroom this week as a judge is determining whether to declare the defendant  indigent, which would mean the state assuming most of the cost of her defense in the death penalty case. Here, the story takes a particularly lurid turn as Anthony's lawyers disclosed that of the $275,000 spent thus far in her defense, ABC News has footed $200,000 of the bill.

ABC News claims that in August 2008, the news operation licensed exclusive rights to certain photos and home videos of the Anthony family. Furthermore, according to court documents, ABC News paid  Casey Anthony's parents' hotel bill for a three-night stay at a Central Fla. Ritz-Carlton.

Although money changed hands a couple of months before Casey Anthony was formally charged, there is no escaping that ABC News paid a substantial sum to an individual suspected of killing her child and that the financial arrangement was not disclosed publicly until a judge compelled counsel to reveal the news organization's involvement in open court.

The litany against the practice of checkbook journalism is well-known in media critic, journalist and academic circles: it deprives media outlets that can't afford to pony up payment access to news; it encourages "lazy" journalism to buy a story rather than ferret it out with old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting; it taints the objectivity of the news outlet to have a vested interest in covering a story it paid for, and it further blurs the line between news and entertainment.

And, as in this instance, it also makes those who have a functioning moral compass nauseous to read about it.