As a former trial judge who was trained as a journalist, the author views the media's portrayal of criminal justice and the public's apparent obsession with it as a disturbing trend in information and misinformation about the courts for entertainment purposes. An aggravating factor in the relationship between the media and the courts is that those in the judicial system find that there are no enforceable rules when working with the press. The interrelationship between the media and the courts is adversarial. There is no profession more maligned on television and film than judges and lawyers. They are, more often than not, portrayed as neurotic, incompetent, calloused, or corrupt. The harm of such portrayals is that Americans are twice as likely to get information about courts from television drama as they are from people they know who have been jurors or had other court experiences. The result of this is not only a low public confidence in our courts, but hostility toward them as well. To rectify this, attorneys and judges must work to demystify the system. They must work with the media to enhance accuracy and produce education programming for the public. News media should also emphasize actual court coverage. The public can then see that not every trial is exciting and entertaining drama.