Media Roundup: Just A Paper Sum

There's only two stories on the Conrad Black trial from overnight and today:

1. Peter Worthington's latest column, which starts off by discussing the frequent use of plea bargains. Mr. Worthington then recounts that Mr. Black "has adamantly and angrily rejected a seven-year plea bargain sentence, and preferred to risk 101 years in jail if found guilty by a Chicago jury." He concludes that the only way Conrad Black will get jail is if he has been found to lie.

2. Another regular writer on the trial, Romina Maurino, starts off with the wall-of-boredom theme, which may lead to Conrad Black walking in a technical snooze-off. Introduction of travels to another land only seem to humanize Mr. Black to the jury. He's already "musing before one session last week that prosecutors have yet to show they have a case." Ms. Maurino's write-up ends with a plausible fallback strategy for the prosecution: hoping that the enormity of the case will put the jurors in the state of mind for deciding that Conrad Black must be culpable of something.


Also, Mark Steyn's latest blog post tells of a prosecutor who tries, but misunderstands what a genuine crime is. Peter Brieger's earlier suggestion that the Blacks would have had a relatively better time in Wasaga Beach adds a harmony to the aftermath of the Bora Bora frenzy, and Toronto Life's Alan Gold speculates on the real reason why the two Torys lawyers who were absolutely taped in Toronto preferred their testimony to be edited through videotape.

----------

J. Richard Finlay has posted a rebuttal to an earlier Toronto Life blog posting by Roger Martin in his own blog, "Finlay ON Governance." In it, Mr. Finlay argues that Mr. Martin's claim, that current corporate-governance advocates should have their own conduct examined, comes close to advocating criminalization of soon-to-be-normal business practice.