
Until Friday, at least, the cable news coverage of the first criminal trial of a former president carried a hint of anticlimax.
With the dry and slow-moving proceedings inside a Lower Manhattan courtroom closed to their cameras, the networks could only offer their usual interviews with experts and analysts, set to the sights and sounds of their outdoor, on-location camera positions.
That all changed on Friday when a man from Florida, Max Azzarello, set himself on fire near the courthouse — immediately bringing home the promise and perils of live cable news, especially for the network that invented the genre, CNN.