Abstract
I. Introduction For two months in Spring 2005, the story of the tug of war between family factions over whether to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube dominated the news and provided fodder for an ideological battle between conservatives and liberals, each of whom found ample grounds to criticize the media for not telling its side of the story. 1 Their faction-based perception of the media coverage threatened to overshadow the more complex reality of how the press really performed in reporting this multi-dimensional story. Was the coverage fair and accurate or did it pander to special interests? What criteria should be used to make this determination? Is it even possible or appropriate to apply uniform standards to the fragmented and ever-expanding media channels - from network television to cable to blogs? How were the pressures imposed on the media today - both from within and without - implicated in the telling of the story? What lessons does the Schiavo case teach about how the press might do it differently or better next time? These are some of the issues addressed in this Article. Ultimately, this Article concludes that despite the sound and fury from critics, the mainstream print and broadcast press for the most part did a credible job in its coverage of the Schiavo case. The very fact that neither side of the ideological divide was satisfied may well stand as ironic confirmation of that assessment. Nevertheless, this Article warns that wholesale ideological critiques of the media - ...