Ashleigh Banfield is back.
A while back, she was the flavor of the month at MSNBC. She became a symbol of cable news. Then her program was cancelled due to poor ratings. She criticized cable news coverage of the Iraq war. She slowly disappeared from the air and left NBC in 2004.
But she’s back, on CourtSide, a new afternoon show on Court TV. Banfield and co-anchor Jack Ford are being billed as “news veterans.”
“I like Ashleigh but my problem with her is she is not a lawyer,” a Court TV message board commenter says. “Guess I am old school thinking the anchors should be lawyers if they are going to be telling me about trials.”
On Banfield’s personal Web site, she admitted she had never tackled the legal beat until she filled in for Catherine Crier in April. “Most people who work at Court TV are trained attorneys and could run circles around me in their legal knowledge! Therein lies that challenge!,” she wrote at the time. Some more Banfield bio is after the jump…
Banfield was a news anchor in Canada before moving to KDFW-TV in Dallas. She joined MSNBC as a co-host of HomePage in 2000. After 9/11, she anchored “A Region In Conflict,” which eventually became “Ashleigh Banfield: On Location.” The program was cancelled in October 2002, and she parted ways with NBC in early 2004…