First

I read of a judge who admitted that he only paid attention to the prosecution's arguments during bench trials. He said that if he listened to the defense too, he got confused.

That seems to be pretty common elsewhere. Even though first reports are rarely complete and commonly just wrong, how many people do you know who remember the followups? First impressions trump everything.

When the matter has nothing to do with your life and you don't care, that bias seems mostly harmless. But that little weakness, exploited by the malicious, starts to loom larger when you do have to judge.

The media have reputations to uphold, and retractions that might sully their record for accuracy have always gone deep in the classifieds or the round file. We just get the first impressions faster today.