A Kinder, Gentler Nancy Grace?

June 28, 2007 — -- Pregnancy probably won't change Nancy Grace, but it might change what her audience thinks of her, media experts said of the tough-talking talking head who once compared defense attorneys to Nazi concentration camp guards.

Grace, anchor of an eponymously titled legal talk show on CNN's Headline News channel, recently revealed she secretly married an old college friend and at 47 years old was pregnant for the first time -- with twins.

"Whether she's married or has children should have nothing to do with whether she's a good TV anchor, but we all live in the age of celebrity and people are interested in the lives of those we see on-screen," said Howard Kurtz, a television critic for the Washington Post. "It should help her be seen as more than a prosecutorial presence."

Grace earned a reputation as a staunch champion of victims' rights while working as a prosecutor in the Atlanta-Fulton County district attorney's office. She left the job without having lost a single case -- though several would be overturned later -- to take a spot anchoring a Court TV show with Johnny Cochran in 1997. In 2005 she began to host "Nancy Grace" on Headline News.

Since starting her broadcast career Grace has routinely referenced, and at times embellished, her biography. She has often cited the 1979 murder of her then-fiancé, an event she says inspired her to become a prosecutor. But a March 2006 New York Observer article found that she had embellished and manipulated many of the facts surrounding the death of her boyfriend Keith Griffin.

"If I have an appeal, I think it's that I'm the real deal. I'm not pretending to be anything but a crime victim who went to law school and tried a lot of cases," Grace told USA Today in February 2006.

That image of the downtrodden victim turned victorious crime fighter has served Grace well, said Brian Stelter, editor of the televisions news blog, tvnewser.com.

"I don't think it will change her on-air image, she'll still project her same on-air demeanor," Stelter said. "But it will change the way her audience views her. When she made her announcement, she sounded like she was getting choked up a bit and might cry."