Inside the Diddy trial: why it felt like a watch party at the courthouse

0:00Every reporting beat has its own unique challenges, and sometimes it's just getting inside the building. The first few days, starting off with jury selection, I was outside the courthouse at around 5 a.m., so it was still dark and cold and kind of rainy. That's Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento, one of the reporters who covered the Sean Combs trial for NPR. People started paying line sitters pretty early on, so someone to hold their spot in line for them overnight, which quickly turned into 10 p.m. the day before, 2 p.m. the day before. The federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan is a busy place even without the circus of a hip-hop tycoon's criminal trial.

0:34So on some days, the lines would be even more chaotic. Every Friday morning, that's when they would be swearing in New American Citizens in other courtrooms. Anastasia Siolkas also covered the trial for NPR. Isabel was really great when I was filling in for her on Fridays to be like, don't forget, it's New Citizens Day. And I was like, oh, that's right. And once they did get inside the building? So when you first enter in, there's a metal detector, like at an airport, and one of the marshals there inspects how many electronics you're bringing in. Then a second marshal confirms that number, hands you a little disc.

1:08You go marching down the hallway with your stuff and this little disc to yet another marshal who checks you in, stashes your stuff in a cubby, and gives you yet another token to carry up to the courtroom. Some days they'd be in the courtroom and other days they'd be in an overflow room with TV monitors beaming in the action. And with all their stuff in a cubby, at this point, all they had was pen and paper. No phone, no laptop. Old school. I think for this trial, the days that I was sitting through whole days of testimony, I was averaging about 35, 36 handwritten pages and notes. I went through four notebooks throughout the eight weeks of the trial.

1:47Like I wrote my way through four entire notebooks. It came down to being like, what are the initials I'm going to use for each person? I had one color pen for the prosecution, one color pen for the defense. I very quickly learned how important it was to write down timestamps so then I could go back and say, like, you know, this witness spent X number of hours on the witness stand. On July 2nd, Sean Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced, racketeering and sex trafficking. He was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, and he remains in prison awaiting sentencing in early October.

2:17Over the course of eight weeks, the trial became a spectacle, even by the high standards of celebrity courtroom dramas. One reason for that? All of the influencers. Guys, so it's 545. People have been lined up out here since midnight. Y 'all, what's poppin'? It's your girl, Ms. Pleasant. I'm out here at the ditty trial. Y 'all already know. I'm going back upstairs. So we've got Meteor Row over here, all the mainstream reporters doing their morning segments. then over here is where I would expect protesters. That was Armand Wiggins, Ms. Pleasant, and Emily Hagan, just a few of the influencers who covered the Combs trial.

2:57There are a limited number of press seats in the actual courtroom, and there were days where most of those seats were taken up by influencers. Consider this. Old and new media converged at the trial of Sean Combs. So today, we've got our weekly Reporter's Notebook series, where we bring you inside our reporting process to hear how NPR correspondents are covering the week's biggest stories. This episode, the view from inside the courthouse as the ditty spectacle unfolded.

3:29From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

3:42It's Consider This from NPR. We're going to jump straight into my conversation with Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento and Anastasia Siolkas, who covered the Sean Combs trial for NPR's Culture Desk. I started by asking them about the courthouse dynamics between influencers and legacy media outlets like NPR. Here's Isabella. I would say there were dozens of influencers there, whether that was people with YouTube channels, true crime podcasters, people who are big on TikTok. There was a number of people who referred to themselves as independent journalists. So at first we thought there was going to be a little bit of a divide because, you know, people from accredited outlets have these New York City issued press passes.

4:20Very quickly, the influencers had those as well as independent journalists again. But it did create some friction and it did add some chaos to what was already a high profile trial. You know, whether you were leaving for lunch break or leaving for the day, there would be sort of waves of people running to the elevators, going downstairs, getting their devices, running outside. And everyone is turning on their phone, turning on their selfie sticks, turning on all of their equipment and recording themselves, sort of recounting the day's events. People bleeding into each other's videos. You know, that was sort of a thing walking around outside.

4:54Like you don't want to be in the background of an influencer's video or you don't want to be caught like speaking to your editor in someone's live TikTok. Were there moments where you saw big differences in how the traditional media versus the independent journalists, as they've called themselves, approached covering this trial, what they thought their roles were, how they did their roles? I mean, I would say I saw and observed a lot of those quote unquote new media people being much more partisan participants in this trial. You know, a lot of folks, especially in the overflow rooms and who were there for their own channels and their own platforms, were quite outspoken about their perspectives on the trial and whom they believed and what they thought was compelling.

5:39And one day Isabella said to me that it felt like she was at a watch party in the overflow room because people are like talking back. You know, it's like everyone's sitting in a bar watching a sports game and yelling back at the screen. That's what it felt like a lot of the days. Just to cut in, by and large, the consensus was pro-ditty here, right? Is that fair to say? That was my interpretation, yeah. In the overflow room, yes. Yeah. A lot of them were very vocal about how they felt about, for example, the Me Too movement and power dynamics in 2025. You know, people were talking about here was a famous black man being put on trial for his sexual proclivities.

6:19And would that ever happen with a white man, whether he was a celebrity or not? And, you know, the talking back presented its own logistical difficulties aside from like even the issue of seating, you know, because the journalists who were there trying to do all these handwritten notes, you know, it was very hard to hear sometimes what was being said in the actual courtroom because people were busy talking back at the screen. Yeah. Yeah. There was the watch party vibe was really real. There was a lot of times where people in the overflow room were like cheering or laughing, especially when the defense was cross-examining some of the witnesses and cross-examining some of the alleged victims.

6:57And, you know, it was really jarring because it felt really at odds with the seriousness of the allegations at hand in the trial. This was a sex trafficking trial. There was a lot of very sexual graphic testimony. And that was another big difference I would notice outside when people were live. A lot of the influencers were very quick to give some of the most graphic details that came up. Whereas I felt like, you know, as a reporter, sometimes you're trying to filter. How do we explain this to our audience? What is the sensitive way to sort of talk about some of these very serious allegations?

7:28And, you know, there is more of an entertainment value on social media where people did sometimes repeat some of the most salacious things that were said in the courtroom. I'm curious, did either of you observe any of this and kind of rethink or tweak the way you were approaching this trial? You know, I think it did make me realize that it was really important to be sort of conversational in the way that we were explaining this to people and not get caught up in the legal terms of it all. But I think there were a lot of questions that it raised on like the ethics of how do you report on trauma, you know, and the trauma of some of these people.

7:59Well, let me ask you something along those lines. I mean, like you saw, obviously there was this massive social media demand for the content of this trial. But at the same time, I know there were probably a lot of listeners at NPR saying, like, why are we covering this? There's so much happening in the world. Why are we devoting this many resources to covering this celebrity trial? I'm curious what both of you thought about that. Like, what to you was the journalistic value of going through this enormously tricky process of parking yourself in an overflow room, cramping your hand, writing these notes?

8:31What to you was the bigger questions that this story got to that was worth the time and effort you put into it? I mean, Sean Combs is such a massively important cultural figure, not just in music, but in fashion, in TV, for being an entrepreneur across a number of industries. And I've spoken to a lot of people who say he sort of embodies the American dream, especially for black communities. At the same time, I think we're at a moment where we're grappling with how people with that much power may or may not use it and abuse that power to subject other people to harm. So there were a lot of big cultural implications for this trial beyond the fact that he's a celebrity.

9:08It speaks to a lot of questions and issues we have about how race and gender and wealth and all of these things work together in our culture. And it was really important for us to be there and to sort of help parse out some of those questions through our coverage. I could not agree more. And also, you know, several years after sort of the first wave of Me Too cases and to see not just a jury of 12 people, but a larger culture grapple with these issues. One of the things we haven't talked about so much is the number of influencers who belong to the so-called manosphere and have very, very, very strong opinions about gender roles, gender commitments, I guess I would say for lack of a better word, like how relationships could and should occur.

10:01And just watching this trial as sort of a marker of how cultural attitudes may or may not be shifting is a really important thing. Like this ongoing Internet backlash against women who bring accusations. You saw it with the Johnny Depp trial as well. Yeah. And even in the courtroom, I do think in the overflow room in particular, there was a moment when one of the defense attorneys asked an alleged victim if this was part of a, quote, Me Too money grab. And people were cheering and laughing. And it just felt very indicative of how people feel about sexual assault allegations right now, all this time out from the onset of the Me Too movement.

10:38I want to end with the verdict and what it was like to cover and experience that. Anastasia, you were in court for this. Walk us through what happened and what you saw. Yeah, I got there pretty early, Scott, because I thought that there was a very good chance that the deliberations were going to end that day because this was just before the 4th of July. And I think everyone was very aware that everyone, I'm sure the jury included, wanted to go home. So I tried to position myself really strategically towards the back of the overflow room at the end of a row very near the door so that if it happened, I'd be well positioned to run out the door.

11:18And I'm a longtime New Yorker, so I think it's safe to say I'm pretty good at negotiating crowds. But it was mostly a matter of proactively planning how I was going to get out. And less than an hour after the jury sat for deliberations that day, they had set a note to the judge saying that they had a unanimous verdict on all three of the charges. So I stayed to hear the verdict and sort of see the initial reactions from Sean Combs and his family. And I wore sneakers that day on purpose, and I just sprinted at the door downstairs. I think I was on the 24th floor, so I took the elevator down, sprinted towards the electronics line, and got out in just a few minutes to ping my editors.

12:04How quickly were you on the radio after that? I'm so glad you asked that question. I filed two spots for newscasts from right outside, and then it was like a movie. I got uptown through like four miles of traffic, and it was serious, serious traffic. arrived at the bureau just in time to get myself in a chair in front of a microphone with something like three minutes to spare to a live interview on Morning Edition. What an adrenaline rush. What an adrenaline rush.

12:37That was Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento and Anastasia Siolkas, who covered the Sean Combs trial for NPR's Culture Desk. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and Kira Joachim. It was edited by Adam Rainey and Jacob Gantz. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan.

12:55It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detra.