Between September 8 and September 13, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 19 separate segments about the Lindsay Clancy case. Clancy is the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children to death in 2023. A mistrial was declared after a hung jury — eleven jurors wanted acquittal, and one held out for guilty.

The networks decided the holdout -- the lone Black man and the only person of color on the jury -- was the story.

Across all three networks, 64.6 percent of Clancy coverage was positive — sympathetic framing, soft-focus interviews, defense-friendly narratives. CBS led the charge at 72 percent positive. NBC followed at 71 percent. ABC came in at 54 percent, which apparently counts as restraint in 2026.

The coverage of the lone guilty-voting juror went the other direction. NBC dedicated 98 percent of its juror coverage to negative framing. ABC hit 96.5 percent. CBS, the most "balanced" of the three, still clocked 80 percent negative. The aggregate: 94.7 percent of all juror coverage across three major networks painted the person who voted guilty as the villain.

Not the woman who killed three children. The Black man who said she should be held accountable.

NBC published the juror's identity, a Black man named Michael in his 30's, including a dismissed domestic violence charge. ABC's World News Tonight detailed Michael's rent payment history, including the fact he allegedly owes $12,000 to an ex-landlord. NBC's Today show ran a story about an alleged incident with the man's nephew. The message was clear: here is the holdout's name, here is where to find the dirt, here is why you should be angry at this person instead of Lindsay Clancy who sent her husband out to run errands so she could strangle her 3 young children to death.

Kevin Reddington, Clancy's defense attorney, got the kind of uncritical airtime defense lawyers usually have to buy. CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King helped set the tone — the segments weren't structured as legal analysis, they were structured as character rehabilitation for a woman who strangled her own children.

Twelve of the 19 segments — 63 percent — spent time explaining why the trial happened in the first place, as though the murder of three children required justification before a jury could weigh in. The framing wasn't "here's what the evidence showed." It was "here's why you should feel sorry for her."

One juror reportedly stated during the proceedings that "everything proved that she loved her children." That quote ran across multiple networks as though love and homicide are somehow mutually exclusive charges on a jury form. The networks treated it as exculpatory. A juror who voted to acquit was explaining why strangling three kids didn't meet the bar for guilt.

NBC has some institutional memory here. In 2021, an NBC producer was caught chasing the jury van during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial — the same network now publishing a juror's personal history to make them a target of public anger. The pattern isn't new. When a verdict or a holdout goes against the preferred narrative, the juror becomes the defendant.

The machinery is always the same. A case with facts that make the progressive framework uncomfortable gets repackaged. The perpetrator becomes a victim of circumstance. The system that held the line becomes the oppressor. And anyone who stood in the way of the preferred outcome gets doxxed on morning television.

Nineteen segments across three networks over five days, and not one of them led with the names of the three children who were strangled to death. The networks found plenty of airtime to humanize their killer and destroy the one juror who said it mattered.

That ratio — 64.6 percent sympathy for the defendant, 94.7 percent hostility for the juror — isn't coverage. It's assignment.