Jonathan Storm: A case made for cable news

Casey Anthony got six more days in jail Thursday, watched by a fraction of the hordes who saw the verdict in her murder case during prime-time workday hours.

But CNN's Headline News, which is now called HLN because screechy talk-show hosts attract way more viewers than real news does, continued to poke the bees' nest of viewers hooked to the perfect cable news story.

"There's really a crowd," said HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell, whose variegated dye job and dark eye circles made her stand out in the gathering of protesters outside the Orlando, Fla., courthouse.

No, there wasn't. Maybe 20 people at the time, it swelled all the way to about 85, as Velez-Mitchell said Anthony's trial and verdict were just like those of O.J. Simpson.

No, they weren't. Simpson was a huge national celebrity before the trial began. Anthony was an unknown, young, single mom, petite and attractive, who supplied just the kind of appealing visuals that draw cable news to the tiny percentage of female murder victims it anoints to national fame.

And, unlike the usually depressing stories of the more than 100 American mothers who kill their children every year, hers was a story that, properly stoked, could provoke outrage and loyal viewership.

HLN's Nancy Grace, an American disgrace, latched on and still hasn't let go, making Anthony the defendant without a name, calling her Tot Mom, instead. It was good business. The little network got higher ratings in June than at any other time in its 29 years, no matter what it was called.

We humans are hardwired to chatter about the surprising events, tragedies, or peccadilloes that befall our neighbors and acquaintances, which numbered a couple of hundred at most until the invention of mass media. Now, with cable news whirring 24/7, the tribe apparently includes the 6.8 billion people over all the Earth.

Anthony's homicide acquittal is "a disgrace to all innocent children in the world," one Orlando protester shouted into Velez-Mitchell's microphone, "all the other babies that are out there and probably dead somewhere in the bushes."

Grace and her ilk will find another case with a pretty mom after the Tot Mom's ratings power wanes. Until then, isn't it a shame that Lauren Spierer - 4-foot-11, 95 pounds, 20 years old, blond, blue eyes - is still missing out in Indiana? Her picture's right there on Grace's blog.

Jonathan Storm on the TV blitz.

A17.