Jay Homnick:
Last week's news is serious enough that she should lose her job and become yesterday's news. She has lost perspective of her role, segueing from crime news anchor and show host back into a prosecutorial fantasy. In the process, real people have been hurt in the real world. The show must not go on.
Andrew Cohen:
I'm surprised that violence hasn't surrounded her shtick already and more often. The combination of rage, revenge, accusation and innuendo that permeates her show and her television personality is precisely the sort of roiling, viscious, corrosive potion that leads people to think they are heroes when they are about to act as villians.
Cohen talks about the danger of exploiting crime to achieve ratings, a point echoed by C.W. Nevius:
[W]ith a crowded field of cable talk shows, from Fox to MSNBC to CNN to Court TV, it isn't easy to grab ratings unless you are the loudest and the most controversial. From JonBenet Ramsey to Scott Peterson, sensational crime stories draw viewers. The idea is to cover the crimes, particularly murders, exhaustively, but make it seem as if it is a kind of public service. That's why, CNN Headline News explained, it went ahead and aired the interview even after Duckett killed herself.
Marcel Berlins reminds us that trial by television is still going strong in the United States, "with sometimes tragic consequences." In the courtroom of television, Nancy Grace is chief judge and head executioner.