{"id":675448,"date":"2025-06-16T23:55:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/outside-the-diddy-trial-a-new-media-guard-rules\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T23:55:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:55:16","slug":"outside-the-diddy-trial-a-new-media-guard-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/outside-the-diddy-trial-a-new-media-guard-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside the Diddy Trial, a New Media Guard Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tEvery weekday around 3 p.m. local time at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, a frenzy begins. Following hours of sensational testimony and evidence in the sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of hip-hop and fashion mogul Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs \u2014 whose nosedive as a cultural icon after three decades of success seems to sink him further from those heights as new victims take the stand to implicate and denounce him \u2014 you\u2019ll spot the first trickle of media<\/a> types, supporters and everyday folks stepping out of the rear entrance at Manhattan federal court. Some are frantically typing on their just-returned smartphones (which are contraband inside the building), instantly relaying the lurid details from the day\u2019s testimony; others make a beeline to catch the uptown 6 train beneath nearby City Hall to a midtown news<\/a>room. After watching hour upon hour of often harrowing allegations of forced sex, battery of women, coercion, gaslighting and emotional cruelty by a romantic partner, which the women named as Combs\u2019 victims have delivered nearly every weekday for five weeks, some of the people exiting the courthouse, with no newsroom or editor to speak of, quickly attach their phones to trip<\/a>ods or selfie sticks to spill the courtroom tea du jour online. Soon, a black van is spotted pulling up to 500 Pearl Street, and it\u2019s time to race around to the front of the courthouse to capture the afternoon\u2019s most valuable moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere, a scrum of livestreamers, YouTubers and TikTok influencers coalesce to snag footage of the Combs family leaving court. Janice Combs, the defendant\u2019s mother, who, after his father was killed, raised him 30 miles north of the courthouse, is the most sought-after photo subject as she attends the trial daily. A moment of chaos erupts when Janice, 83, exits the court and walks the 20 feet to a vehicle that\u2019s just arrived. \u201cJanice! I\u2019d drink your bathwater!\u201d one young livestreamer yells out a few weeks into the trial (he was referencing dialogue from The Color Purple, <\/em>he tells me later). Janice\u2019s popularity during this trial is followed by that of her grandsons, King and Justin Dior Combs, both make for big moments for the livestreaming set \u2014 or for their viewers, rather, as 100s or, for some, 1000s are watching and commenting in real time, fueling the online Diddy media industrial complex.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a classic media frenzy moment, but these are not typical media professionals. The livestreamers have stepped into the Diddy trial beat for the past eight weeks, bringing a wide range of voices as they discuss the legal case and the defendant\u2019s unlikely life story. It could come with a trigger warning: \u201cNot only will there be discussions of domestic violence and emotional abuse, while creating content, you might fall down a rabbit hole leading to unfounded comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein and the collection of kompromat<\/em>, wild speculation about every celebrity who\u2019s met the rapp<\/a>er and, in turn, link already unfounded rumors to QAnon.\u201d All of this and more has already happened online amid the explosion of Diddy-related video content that came after Casandra \u201cCassie\u201d Ventura filed her civil suit against Combs and again after his arrest. Sure, not all of the new media creators and livestreamers are guilty of creating any of this dangerous clickbait, but they stand outside the courthouse in its context and the wild possibilities of revelations at his trial that are now butting up against the the reality of this case: it\u2019s grounded in reality and about a handful of people, most of whom are not famous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tThe front entrance of 500 Pearl St. in New York amid Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 federal trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTHR\/Kevin Dolak<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe trial\u2019s livestreaming players each come with a unique delivery style, that\u2019s less polished or familiar and rife with the slang du jour. Among this gang of street journalists are the sometimes\u00a0<\/span>frantic and frazzled but, more often than not, sharp and informative<\/a> explainers of YouTuber Tisa Tells; the conspiratorial voice of FamerTube<\/a>; the comedy trial coverage of first-timer Sam Croupen<\/a>, who has a 510,000 follower and growing TikTok fanbase; and the wildly popular Rotten Mango, aka true crime podcaster Stephanie Soo, who has taken up the Diddy trial and is running with it so successfully, she overtook Joe Rogan as the top podcaster on YouTube<\/a>. This trial and the non-professionals covering it have been commanding the eyes and ears of so many that the old guard is even finally playing nice, at least anecdotally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe way that the mainstream has treated influencers has changed so much,\u201d said Brianna Logan, who told The Hollywood Reporter <\/em>she is in New York after crowdsourcing funds and has covered several big trials for her Instagram account<\/a>. \u201cI think when I was covering Ghislane Maxwell, it was so disrespectful, the way I was treated. Like, \u2018Give me that seat! I want to sit there,\u2019 and they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, cute. You\u2019re on Instagram.\u2019 They\u2019re just so much more respectful now. It\u2019s different. I think they have to acknowledge that their numbers are down. Social media numbers are up \u2014\u00a0there\u2019s no denying that. And it\u2019s probably good of them to admit that there is a change happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBehind us, across Pearl Street, distanced from this new media gaggle, stands the media\u2019s old guard, firmly set up with expensive cameras and weather-protective canopies in a neat row on the west side of Columbus Park. Hair and makeup are on point. But it\u2019s unclear if these camera-ready reporters are actually inside watching the trial unfold each day before their stand-up live shot. This may not matter because legacy media outlets have an entire apparatus moving information from the courtroom, fodder for live blogs published in near-real-time, giving a detailed rundown of testimony, feds vs. defense courtroom tension, Combs\u2019 silent antics with the jury and Judge Arun Subramanian\u2019s shifting mood. What all of this costs the networks and cable news outlets is surely sizable; what\u2019s produced is beholden to the many limitations or traditions of TV news: outmoded news segment formats, restrictive standards and red tape and, often, middle-of-the-road story selection. The result? Legacy media isn\u2019t getting the full Diddy trial story as some of it unfolds right in front of their poised cameras.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe contrast between these two groups of media figures \u2014 all parties being content creators, after all \u2014 and their proximity to the court when it lets out at 3 p.m. feels too on the nose. With online news\u2019 pivot to video nearly a decade ago and the TikTok and influencer era that followed, impactful on-camera reporting has shifted away from the stoic, as-neutral-as-possible, serious journalist to the selfie-style-shooting, personable, quirky novice who caters to an audience of their own creation. On any given weekday outside Combs\u2019 trial, content creators and livestreamers shout rundowns and takes to their followers, some even fielding legal questions. The problem for many is that these livestreams are often unpolished and, at times, messy, with cringe-inducing errors, admissions of having \u201cno idea what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d This has always been an uncomfortable fact around the democratization of media and the rise of individual voices as news sources on social media, Substack, YouTube and the rest. With the backbone of a news report, namely fact checking and sourcing, jettisoned in favor of trust cultivated by personality-driven influencers and popular takes, will the truth slip out of the old idea of journalism: holding truth to power?<\/p>\n

\n\tThis slippage is occurring amid some upsetting trends for the old guard and great news for digital platforms. According to the Pew Research Center<\/a>, 86 percent of Americans turn to digital devices for news, with two-thirds using news websites and apps and around half getting news directly from social media channels. Meanwhile, 23 percent say they prefer to get their news from apps and websites, but those who prefer social media news rose 6 percent to 18 percent. This is deeply relevant to this moment and the Combs\u2019 narrative and trial, which comes 30 years after television and cameras in the courtroom rattled the O.J. Simpson trial, which may have affected public opinion and contributed to the case exposing deep national divides along race. The influencers and livestreamers may not have such an impact here, but the size and diversity among the audiences they command and, at times, can mobilize shouldn\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou get just so many passionate people telling stories and creating content in different ways,\u201d creator Emilie Hagen told THR<\/em> outside the federal court. \u201cAnd you have people that are sleeping outside as a career right now, just aiding the culture of Diddy. It shows what he built, and it shows why the stakes are so high.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHagen, one of several one-woman producer-hosts milling about the courthouse perimeter each day, also dabbles in comedy, written journalism and ghostwriting. She had garnered attention online by meticulously preserving rapper Kanye \u201cYe\u201d West\u2019s oft-deleted X.com<\/a> missives and rantings (@kanyesposts). Since she crowdfunded her followers to fly to New York for Combs\u2019 trial in mid-May, she\u2019s been uploading rapid-fire clips<\/a>, consisting of her roving around the Diddy trial happenings outside of the Pearl Street federal courthouse. She posts her incisive and, at times, revealing work on the regular platforms: Instagram, which gets the bulk of her traffic; YouTube; and Twitch. She arrived from California, as she told THR<\/em> in an interview, \u201cmore interested in documenting the chaos surrounding the courthouse, what characters it attracts, and what the culture like is outside the courthouse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHagen\u2019s move was wise at this untelevised trial, where phones or even vapes won\u2019t move past security \u2014 you could even say it was prescient. She was the first to nail down the story behind a group of seemingly unhoused and potentially high men and women donning \u201cFree Diddy\u201d T-shirts who had gathered in Columbus Park. What looked like a semi-transparent orchestrated pro-Combs protest turned out to be a promotion for Diddycoin, a cryptocurrency launched by two of Combs\u2019 sons. That this stunt took place feet from the cameras owned by the networks and was missed but exposed by a roving livestreamer speaks more than that the story was confronted by a tenacious reporter. Hagen has also revealed, by simply walking over, phone extended and asking for an interview, the identity and firsthand account of the woman who was dragged from the courtroom after running to the front of the gallery and yelling to Combs; mainstream outlets largely referred to Jacqueline \u201cCandor\u201d Williams as an \u201cunidentified woman;\u201d and when West arrived in court, Hagen was kind enough to provide THR<\/em> with some of the details of his visit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese characters are as much a part of the trial, I think, as the people inside,\u201d Hagen said, referring not only to the estimated two dozen livestreamers documenting the trial\u2019s major revelations and its strange fringes, but also everyone in the spectacle: the angry man who arrives daily to rant at the crowd, the man who turned up in Renaissance-era garb, the revelers and the Diddy truthers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the livestreaming new guard feel an ownership of the Diddy story that the mainstream media hasn\u2019t earned \u2014 or forfeited by not covering Cassie Ventura\u2019s 2023 civil suit against Combs. They watched as interest from the networks and other mainstream outlets grew after Combs\u2019 quick settlement out of court came the next day. They noticed as Combs\u2019 legal woes became a hot story and then possible RICO case. The interest outside of streaming gradually grew with civil lawsuits and complaints, and then exploded with a salacious civil case in February 2024 from producer Rodney \u201cLil Rod\u201d Jones. From there, the Diddy headlines came daily and eventually were unavoidable. For livestreamers like Donat Ricketts, a.k.a. Donat POV, this is tantamount to theft of services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m the most viral thing out here,\u201d Donat tells me outside the courthouse as we wait for the Combs family to depart for the day. \u201cLike, getting them engaged, actually having critical thinking and viewpoints. I understand a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDonat explains how he shadowed under different lawyers in Los Angeles in a four-year program but says he decided he doesn\u2019t want to be a lawyer, because you have to \u201cget indoctrinated.\u201d He\u2019d rather livestream from the big trials of rappers and others who will help him grow Donat POV\u2019s audience. But the media trying to take over from here stings, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the significance of this case, in this very moment, is showing the power of streaming platforms,\u201d he told THR<\/em>. \u201cYou gotta understand something: When Cassie filed a lawsuit before the prosecutor and they sent Diddy a letter. I have a video [from then] with 650,000 views talking about Diddy \u2014 we\u2019re the ones who really amplified this. The mainstream media is playing catch-up, and we always said that we weren\u2019t gonna let mainstream media take authority over something that we did the work to investigate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDonat\u2019s coverage of the Combs trial \u2014 personality-driven, entertaining (if unpolished), informed but not always correct, deeply engaged with its audience \u2014 encapsulates the advantages and pitfalls of the imperfect medium. Influencer content and livestreaming\u2019s continuous audience-gobbling from the mainstream\u2019s old guard is not an \u201cif\u201d question but a \u201chow much\u201d question on quarterly damage assessments amid shrinking resources for newsrooms. As for the persistent pitfalls of the one-person newsroom \u2014 no fact-checking, no logistics, no security or crisis training and just too much information for one person to process and deliver \u2014 it seems that some of the deeper and most problematic issues of this encroachment will go unaddressed, at least for now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think people are trying to uncover something big,\u201d Hagen said about her coverage. \u201cI\u2019m trying to capture a moment in culture, emotionally. Traditional media can\u2019t really explore that. CNN can\u2019t be talking about their emotions. They just have to stick to the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n