Fastow trial being broadcast?

March 8, 2006 12:58 PM

Is the Andrew Fastow (Enron) trial being broadcast or re-broadcast anywhere? Are trials in TX even filmed??

I thought maybe Court TV might have something but I don't see anything on their schedule. I found a blog being updated pretty much live here:

http://blogs.chron.com/enrontrialwatch/

but visuals are always cool.

posted by mpemulis to law & government (5 comments total)

Oof - I guess I should rephrase that as the trial of Skilling and Lay which at the moment is Fastow's testimony....
posted by mpemulis at 1:00 PM on March 8, 2006

How come Enron gets so much play as a sort of cultural milestone of fraud when WorldComm was so much bigger?
posted by xmutex at 1:09 PM on March 8, 2006

Some trials in Texas are videotaped. I particularly recall seeing the closing arguments in some of the sensational Houston-area murder trials rebroadcast on the local news. However, that does not mean that any particular trial is taped. I don't believe this one is, but I could be wrong.

You might find more info, including video from outside the courtroom, at the local network affiliate web sites for KHOU, KTRK, and KPRC.
posted by Robert Angelo at 1:15 PM on March 8, 2006

Cameras aren't allowed in federal courtrooms.
posted by milkrate at 1:16 PM on March 8, 2006

xmutex, that's a good question. I think one of the reasons might be that Enron not only took itself down, it took a whole accounting firm (Arthur Andersen) down with it.

I had a summer job at Arthur Andersen's corporate training facility in suburban Chicago when I was in college. I've never encountered another company that was quite as full of itself as they were. This is well over twenty years ago, and I'm sure the field has changed a lot, but at the time they saw themselves as operating in a completely different sphere than even the other big-however-many-it-was-then accounting firms. Apparently the original Arthur Andersen was a real visionary in the field and the sense of distinction was completely internalized and communicated to all employees.

Given all that and Andersen's expressed sense of corporate rectitude, I was fascinated to see them swirl around, and then go down the drain with the upstart Enron in 2001.

Another reason might be that Enron seemed sort of magic before it was all shown to be smoke an mirrors. They were apparently doing new and remarkable things with various commodities markets and such and they just bamboozled everyone until it all fell apart. I think a lot of the fascination is simply about how they were able to get away with it for so long.

By comparison, I think WorldCom was pretty straight-forward. Their success was more apparent as everyone was aware of their penchant for acquisition and their downfall through shady accounting seemed more pedestrian than Enron's.

You might also throw in the oft-denied, but obvious, ties to the White House.
posted by hwestiii at 3:15 PM on March 8, 2006