Did Casey Anthony's YouTube Debut Drive Her Interview Appeal Way Down?

One would think that addressing the public directly would make her less of a get for the networks

By Natalie Finn, Marcus Mulick Jan 06, 2012 1:17 AMTags
Casey Anthonyyoutube.com

Casey Anthony's parents have opened up to Dr. Phil. Her attorney made the media rounds. But Anthony herself hasn't yet sat down for an intimate chat with Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Matt Lauer, et al.

And maybe now she never will—or at least maybe not for the high price an exclusive sit-down with the 25-year-old, who was acquitted of murder last year in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, would seemingly command.

A video of Anthony chattering away about life hit YouTube and, with plenty of morbidly curious people clicking play, surely this sends her value as an interview subject plummeting.

Right?

Well, not necessarily.

In fact, Anthony's complete avoidance of any mention of what happened to her daughter or of her legal drama could make journalists even more interested in poking around in that brain of hers.

One of Anthony's attorneys called the release of the video "unauthorized" and "inappropriate," but some legal and media experts who watched call the video's content textbook narcissism.

"It reminds me of when we see a high school girl doing a video blog. It was very shallow," Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture, tells E! News.

"She mentions her dog she's adopted. She got a computer, she can now Skype. It never mentioned her daughter, which is what everyone will talk about. Forget the idea that this is a person who went through an enormously public murder trial, whose daughter's remains were found a few years ago.  It seems like it could have come from any 15-year-old who first learned to video blog, which is very weird."

The only reference Anthony made to the life-altering events of the past few years was a comment about it being "just a little surreal how much things have changed since July and how many things haven't changed."

"But the good thing is that things are starting to look up and things are starting to change—in a good way," Anthony continued. "I just hope they stay...that things stay good and that they only get better."

Asked if by going public on her own, Anthony had made herself less of a get for the networks, Thompson says it depends on whether more videos surface—and what she has to say.

"If more video blogs come out and they remain as obscure as this, and the fact that she doesn't talk about anything, if I was a journalist, I would be drooling to ask her all the questions that she completely avoided in the video," he tells us.

If, on the other hand, "more of these get released—and presumably she didn't release this, but who knows—and if we start seeing a bunch of these with more details, eventually she can end up providing all the answers an interviewer would ask. 

"But so far," Thompson says, "she's provided none. In fact, she's actually raised a new question!  What's wrong with you?!  This is your first appearance on camera!"

And, if her attorney and others hadn't confirmed it was, in fact, Anthony on the video, Thompson says he probably wouldn't have known it was her (a memo to Anthony, in case she's trying to make it big on the YouTube scene).

"If I would have stumbled on this video and it was unlabeled, I never would have thought it was Casey Anthony," he says. "Not only did it not look like her, but she says nothing in the video that could I.D. her, other than obscure things about probation. She does look totally different."