The timely case of Gabe Watson, charged with murdering his wife Tina while scuba diving on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, is proof of the damage still wrought by sections of Australia's media, an ill-informed public, weak politicians and zealous prosecutors.

Watson has been facing trial in his home state of Alabama for murder this month. As a result of years of shameless media beat-ups, bungling by Queensland (Australia) detectives and the grief of his wife's parents, he had been charged with an offence that would normally carry the death penalty.

On Friday, the judge hearing the threadbare case threw it out. His disdain for the prosecution's so-called evidence, a tissue of conjecture and speculation, was obvious.

There was never any cogent evidence against Watson. He was a patsy, assailed by his former parents-in-law, carved up by the media, pursued by ambitious prosecutors, abandoned by supine politicians and hated by a public that has been hopelessly misled.

There is, now, indignation among journalists and their audiences who have barracked for Watson to be convicted. They should be apologetic.

A media circus that became increasingly frenzied and ridiculous in its ignorance of readily available evidence led to a politically charged attempt to destroy a man who made a poor split-second decision.

He lacked the wit and the courage to rescue Tina as she panicked underwater on a scuba dive in October 2003.

The strongly-built Watson had next to no chance of winning public sympathy. Like Chamberlain, he was largely silent. He did not cry in public. He would not play the media game. He refused to give interviews.

He became a picture of wickedness in a one-sided story propelled by his parents-in-law and their supporters.

The relentless campaign in the media would repeatedly characterise Watson as a cold-blooded psychopath who murdered his bride on their honeymoon to collect a fortune in life insurance.

In this campaign you did not read or hear that the sole beneficiary of Tina's life insurance was always her father, Tommy Thomas.

You did not read or hear that Watson firmly rejected an approach by an insurance agent who had tried to sell the couple generous life insurance shortly before their wedding and honeymoon.

There was never a credible financial motive for murder.

You did not discover that Watson's expertise as a "rescue diver" had been seriously overstated.

Or that Tina had a heart condition.

Or that her scuba teachers regarded her as a chronic panicker unsuited to diving.

Or that Queensland detectives fundamentally misunderstood crucial evidence because they did not realise a dive computer has two components, and their flawed testing of one (but not the other) of those components gave the wrong result, which contradicted what Watson had previously, and truthfully, told police.

The media focus instead was on emotional "talent".

Television footage of raw grief got prominence that was ill deserved, while extraordinary factual evidence favourable to Watson was omitted.

Give the producers tears, please -- they rate better than boring analysis of evidence showing Watson was a coward, not a killer.

In late 2010, in one of several stories about how the public was being repeatedly conned over the Watson case, I described how Australia's ABC's highly regarded Australian Story made one of the most damaging contributions.

The program, called "Unfathomable" and screened in two parts in August 2010, was even used in evidence by US prosecutors in their bid to bring a murder charge in Alabama.

This occurred after Watson had already voluntarily returned to Australia to plead guilty and take responsibility for her accidental death, or manslaughter, for which he went to prison in Queensland.

Australian Story helped paint Watson as a homicidal murderer. The program was months in the making, yet it omitted reams of evidence that proved the fallacy of its angle and misleading script.

Despite the urgings of Watson's defence team, which declined to take part in the program, Australian Story did not highlight the findings and comments of three justices of the Queensland Court of Appeal (the State's highest court).

Those judges concluded in 2009 that Watson had been wrongly accused of murder; he was devastated by the death of his wife; the so-called many versions he gave about the circumstances were not, as police claimed, that unusual or inconsistent; and that the death of Tina was the result of him making a shockingly poor decision in a hostile environment when under extreme pressure.

The Court of Appeal's findings were markedly different from those of a 2008 Queensland inquest. Despite evidence that the police had misunderstood the dive computer, a crucial feature of the case, it was found the detectives "produced to my inquiry as detailed and complete a picture as I have seen as a coroner".

Lessons can be learned from the Watson case so that other travesties do not occur.

A herd-like pursuit by sections of the media and the preference of a story narrative that rates well (but fails to include objective and contrary facts) could have led to Watson's conviction for murder.

The end of the bloodlust for Watson is a timely reminder of how easily the justice system can be knocked off balance.