Local Baltimore stations and online legacy websites were again the place to be for coverage of the verdict Monday morning in the trial of Officer Edward Nero in the death of Freddie Gray.
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News were at the courthouse to hear the judgment that cleared Nero on all charges in Gray's arrest and death. And given their obsessive coverage of Donald Trump in recent months, they probably deserve some credit for breaking the fever long enough to at least show up and offer some Baltimore coverage.
Each of the three major cable news channels had at least one crew and correspondent in Baltimore. For CNN, it was Miguel Marquez, who has been in Baltimore for most or all of the channel's coverage related to the death of Gray. Fox News had Peter Doocy, while MSNBC had Ron Mott.
None of the three channels did outstanding journalism. The best thing about their collective performance is what they didn't do: Unlike their coverage in December following the mistrial of Officer William Porter, for the most part they did not hype the potential for violence in the city in reaction to the verdict. This time, they seemed to mainly try reporting instead of predicting.
Fox News pushed the potential for violence narrative harder than MSNBC or CNN with Doocy saying at 11:05, "We're looking at some live pictures now of the protesters just in front of the courthouse. And I can tell you in the last few minutes, the crowd has grown significantly from before the verdict was read until right now."
He continued his report by telling viewers, "And now, this officer has been found not guilty, and so the city is ready. There's still some leftover tension from the riots that were very destructive in parts of the Baltimore last spring. Now officers wait just in case. They're ready for anything."
The local stations – WJZ, WBAL, WBFF and WMAR – all interrupted morning entertainment programming once a verdict was delivered. And collectively they offered a much broader panorama with their flood-the-zone approach.
Marcus Washington again did solid and authoritative reporting for WJZ from Penn and North avenues, the epicenter of protests following the funeral of Gray last year.
Like Fox News, CNN was also using live images from WJZ's helicopter, and those wide-angle, overhead pictures offered the best sense of how limited the initial reaction to the verdict was outside the courthouse or anywhere else in the city.