Justice for who?

They both seemed so guilty.

Except for minor charges of lying to the police, Casey Anthony is a free woman following six weeks of testimony that, circumstantially, made the young Florida woman accused of murdering her own child look very bad, indeed.

Likewise, the sensational case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund who was accused of sexual assault against a New York City hotel housekeeper, appears to be crumbling.

Once portrayed as a credible witness and victim of a terrible crime, the accuser of Strauss-Kahn is looking now in news accounts like a prosecutor's nightmare: a taped phone conversation with a friend in prison gloating over her newfound financial opportunities. And a reported history of lying about rape.

The tables now are turned. Now, it is the prosecutors and their aides-de-camp, the insatiable American media, who have questions to answer.

Did media create villains and victims based on caricatures? If you have watched even an hour or two of cable news in recent weeks you know those caricatures.

The law comes out the better of it.

As for the case against the press: Yes, the commentariat was thick with pre-judgment, especially against Strauss-Kahn.

Certainly not. Like it or not - and the numbers of the viewing and reading public tell us a lot of people like it very much - a free and open society requires a free-handed media. Strauss-Kahn and Anthony may beg to differ, of course. But law is the important thing. And the law has served both of them fairly, if not altogether well.

- The Arizona Republic