Former Rod Blagojevich wanted to compete in NBC’s reality series I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here. The judge in his trial for suspicion of trying to sell President Barack Obama’s senate seat said, “No, you may not go to Costa Rica to do a reality show.” Still, Blagojevich lent his support to the show, joining a press conference to announce the competitors, but also talk about his impending trial.
Crave Online: Now you’re maintaining your innocence, so how will you face the burden of proof to prove that, when normally it’s the accusers who have the burden of proof?
Rod Blagojevich: Yeah. See, there's so much involved in this story and there are bigger issues that go beyond just me and what I'm facing. That is that in America every citizen has a right to a presumption of innocence and just because someone says that somebody else did something doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. We were raised to believe in that fundamental principle. The Constitution guarantees it. It's called The Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, with too many members of the media today and this hyper-sensationalized environment of trying to sensationalize all kinds of things, all it takes now is for somebody to make an accusation, however false it might be, and then the media has this big frenzy. They start trying you and convicting you in public before you've had a chance to even catch your breath, much less show and prove that these things are not true and not the case. So that's what has been the environment and has been the environment in America for a long time. I'll have a chance in a courtroom where the whole procedure is different, the rules are different and the law will govern how this works. That law is one that's guaranteed by our Constitution. But I do think there's a lesson here and I think it’s going to be a lesson that law students will learn about over the years and that is that there shouldn't be a rush to judgment. There shouldn't be a hyper-sensationalization by the media and the press and that even those that make the accusations need to temper what they say so that they don't have things that are pre-judged because that's fundamentally unfair and fundamentally a violation of the basic fairness that's guaranteed to us citizens in America by our Constitution.
