ABC News hammered for contributing to Casey Anthony defense -

Bad reviews just keep coming for ABC News.

Critics say the Walt Disney-owned news organization was wrong to pay $200,000 to Casey Anthony and her family for photos and video of toddler Caylee Anthony.

Anthony attorney Jose Baez acknowledged in Orange Circuit Court last week that the network in August 2008 paid his client a licensing fee for exclusive images.

In October 2008, two months after the deal, Anthony was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony.

"It doesn't make them look very family-friendly, does it?" said Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes ABC, CBS and NBC evening news at his Tyndall Report Web site. "It's not just ABC News. It's the entire corporation."

Tyndall was alluding to the fact ABC News is a subsidiary of Disney.

The Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee also took the network to task. In a statement this week, committee chairman Andy Schotz said paying money to sources while reporting on them "breaches basic journalism ethics."

"ABC's failure to disclose this business relationship as part of its coverage the last two years made the breach worse," he said.

ABC News was not the only news organization to pay the Anthonys. CBS News paid George and Cindy Anthony, Casey Anthony's parents, $20,000 to license material. The parents appeared on "48 Hours Mystery" and "The Early Show" last fall.

ABC News' payment "raised eyebrows because the amount of money is high," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that studies the business. "If the disclosure is embarrassing, then the cost of doing it was much higher than the money, and it wasn't worth doing it."

Network insiders say the usual licensing fee is far less — much closer to what CBS paid — and that licensing has been a standard practice in TV news for years.

ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine told the ethics committee that the network should have disclosed the payment to viewers and that ABC had instituted a policy — because of its mistake on the Anthony story — to do so in future reporting.

Disclosure of the Anthony payment comes at a bad time for ABC News, Rosenstiel said.

"ABC has a lot going on right now — reducing your staff by 25 percent is a cataclysmic internal event," he said.

Yet Rosenstiel said the Anthony story reflects a trend in news magazines in recent years. In the mainstream media, paying for an interview — called checkbook journalism — is taboo. Yet news magazines will hire consultants or pay fees for video and photographs to tell a story.

"By and large, the networks will argue they aren't paying for interviews, but money is changing hands and has been for some time," Rosenstiel said. "The principle behind the idea that mainstream news organizations don't pay is when you pay people, you're inducing them to make their story more dramatic. A tabloid pays for a more salacious story."

Rosenstiel attributes the payments in part to the networks' competition with the National Enquirer, TMZ, E! and other players in television.

But Al Tompkins, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, scoffs at the notion that journalists need to license any material to tell stories. After all, journalists have told stories without photos and video for a long time. Yet in the licensing trend, ABC's Anthony story stood out.

"The amount of money is such an unreasonably high number," Tompkins said. "You're paying it to someone under suspicion of murder. She wasn't indicted at that time. But no matter how you spend it, the public perception could be that you're paying for special access or you're trying to curry favor."

The problem wasn't that ABC made the payment but that Anthony was indicted, Tyndall said.

"I don't think ordinary people get worried about the ethics inside the journalism profession," he said. "What they do get worried about is the idea of money being paid to somebody accused of committing a terrible crime."
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Jeeze Casey has even managed to bring shame to Disney! How many "bodies" will lie in her wake before this is over! How much destruction can one person
bring? Everyone that touches her becomes tainted.

Wasn't it an ABC staff member who paid for The Ritz and the expensive dinner with the crab puffs, too?

It is so true...everyone she comes in contact with...gets ruined.

Now I read from a post on blinkoncrime that not only did ABC pay for Caseys defense they gave the Ants
$200,000.00 as well for videos and photos - and even though their house is in foreclosure they are renovating the house!: here is the post:

"Instead of paying the debt they owe to Bank of America, the Anthonys have chosen to spend their
money on expensive renovations to the very home which is currently in foreclosure proceedings. This is certainly suspicious activity and at the least, the height of arrogance.
An internet blogger on a Caylee Anthony blog, attended the Casey Anthony Indigency Hearing on March 18, 2010 and stood with the crowd in the hall outside the courtroom waiting to go inside. This man,blogger user name “sirjef8″, was standing near George and Cindy Anthony and their friends Glenn and Donna Cox.
George Anthony was speaking loud enough for those nearby to hear his conversation with Glenn and Donna Cox, wherein George was talking about all of the extensive renovations they are doing on the house at 4937 Hopespring Dr, Orlando (which is in foreclosure). George Anthony told his friend Glenn Cox that the day before, March 17th, the Salvation Army had come to pick up the waterbed they were disposing of, [requiring the purchase of a new bed ] and that they had finished renovating all three bedrooms, and they were almost done with the living room. This appears to be a huge
expenditure of money, which was not applied to mortgage payments!
The Anthony friends - Glenn and Donna Cox are Realtors in Orlando, FL
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Cell: (407) 694-8684 or Cell (407) 694-8685
Prudential, 12530 Lake Underhill Rd, Orlando, FL 32825
Office (407) 207-0800"
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This makes NO sense, but Nothing makes sense with them. Did they renovate Caylee's room, too? I sure hope they renovated Casey's room as IMHO she will never see it again!

The could have paid off their entire mortgage with that
money. Thats what they have been living off of. Believe me they will NEVER lose this house. Now they have asked for a jury in the lawsuit they are bringing against Bank of America for non-notification or some such nonsense. The drama never ends! You couldnt make this up folks - its much to bizarre for fiction!