Wednesday, April 14, 2010
La Stampa Headline Reads: “This Is The Way That Amanda Subjugated America”
Posted by Tiziano
There’s an excellent review in Italian of “Baby Face” by Glauco Maggi in Italay’s most influential paper, La Stampa. This is the translation.
The Accusation of an American Journalist: the Family Is Spreading Misinformation.
The dense wall of the believers in her innocence, which sprung up in the USA in defence of Amanda Knox, 20 years old, during the trial in Perugia for the murder of her English friend, Meredith Kercher, 22 years old, has been subjected to the first blow from the American side.
In the book Angel Face (Angel Face, the true story of the student killer Amanda Knox), the journalist from Newsweek, Barbie Latza Nadeau, accuses the family of the girl, condemned to 26 years for the voluntary murder, of having created “an innocentista media machine” which has tried to cancel out the heavy body of clues which built up during the trial.
“They have simply chosen to ignore the facts which were coming to light in Italy”, writes Nadeau, who has been the Rome correspondent for Newsweek and other American newspapers since 1996, from the site of the Daily Beast to major television networks (CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN).
The accusations of the journalist are based on her direct experience as a witness, in Italy, of the conduct of the American media. According to Nadeau, access to sources close to Amanda depended on the feelings expressed by the correspondents: the family, essentially, cooperated only with the believers in Amanda’s innocence, to the extent of the payment of travel expenses in exchange for exclusive interviews.
An example of the climate created by the Knox family is the affair of lawyer Joe Tacopina. Having arrived in Perugia as a “legal expert” for the ABC TV channel, at first he played the role of an unofficial of the defender of the interests of the Knoxes. However, when he confided to Nadeau that he could not declare himself to be 100% sure of Amanda’s innocence, having studied the trial documentation, he was excluded from the family circle, which from that moment curled up like a porcupine and actively operated so that their own version would be the only one to reach the USA.
From the moment of the arrest, Nadeau writes, “Amanda and Raffaele were a pushover for the sales of Italian newspapers and of the English tabloids. The local press reported the gossip of the lawyers and the magistrates to liven up the crime story and very soon labelled Amanda as Angel Face, encouraging a morbid fascination.
The British newspapers, ardent in the defence of the English victim’s honour, dug into the details which Amanda had inadvertently put on the Internet, starting from her name on MySpace, Foxy Knoxy. Phone calls to teachers and friends in Seattle provided the description of a studious, intelligent and athletic young girl. But the social networking sites told another story.”
Nadeau unveils the video on YouTube of Amanda drunk at a party, but she strikes the most serious blow to “good girl” when she adds: “Other appearances suggest a more enigmatic and a darker personality. Baby Brother, a film which Amanda had put
on MySpace, is not totally disturbing but contains a rather irresponsible reference to rape.”The investigators took the stories which emerged about her past “as proof that she had at least daydreamed about it, that this was in her mind. Add drugs and alcohol, was their reasoning, and not much was needed for these hidden thoughts would lead to action. The picture was being formed of a shrew who was in thrall of dark impulses and the family struggled to control the storm.” For those who did not accept the reconstructions of the Knoxes as pure gold there was ostracism:
“The TV crews learnt to be careful in letting themselves be seen with people like me, the family would have cut them out of the circle.”
Posted by Tiziano on 04/14/10 at 01:30 AM in Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 12 Rabid media hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, 32 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR
Comments
I suppose the good news here is that as time goes on, Edda and Curt will have less and less money to pay this PR campaign, less money to fly over there, and less interest from ABS, NBC and the likes to do these interviews.
Curt already is out of a job, and Edda will soon be too if she keeps missing time from school.
Amanda not only has ruined her life, RS and Rudy, Meredith’s and her entire family and friends, she’s ruining it for everyone around her too that cared for her. She doesn’t care, and neither do her parents it seems.
I keep telling myself that I don’t really blame Edda and Curt for what they are trying to do for their daughter, but it is wrong in so many ways. I am convinced they know she was involved, but likely not to the real extent.
Posted by John on 04/14/10 at 07:30 PM | #
Amanda is guilty but her parents, even if helping their daughter is a normal duty, are wrong in being so blind to what they do not want to see. This is not helping their daughter in any way…. How could she now admit she is guilty now, after they do all this big show, insulting Italy, Mignini, all the ones who are not on their side, Meredith’s parents etc…?
How could she? They condemned her to silence. One day she will be back home, and will hate them for it. They will then wonder what ever they did, them, the faithfull parents…
Posted by Patou on 04/14/10 at 09:15 PM | #
4/14/10
Ah yes! her writings. “Baby Brother” with drug and rape images and a warning from big brother to criminal brother (maybe Amanda’s good angel versus bad angel?).
AK won a prize with her story for Caritas while in prison. Its characters start out as a lovey-dovey couple lying on a porch, legs entwined. One wears fingerless purple gloves. A halo cast by passing car illuminates blonde hair.
The scene shifts and they go inside a crowded party house. A mountain of beer cans is on kitchen floor. There’s a sense of awful crowding and chaos. Drugs and alcohol. One is forced to raise his arms up high overhead to weave among the partygoers like the mast of a ship. Smoke fills the room. Someone tries to break open a door. Inside something horrible happens. I read the smoke as a substitute image for blood.
Yet right in the middle of all this “apology” to the friend who is taken in an ambulance to hospital, AK writes that “the sun is winking at me” and I must go. Talk about not keeping a straight face! So much for the apology.
I think the sun tattoo on her back is a wink and a nod to the courtroom, as in “I’m a son” (as opposed to daughter). I’m the sun (as in Sun King). I’m a sun worshipper (as in Wiccan), and “The Sun Also Rises”, as in Hemingway, another great American writer who went for the gusto of life.
Madison Paxton said Meredith once drew a tattoo on Amanda.
Crowd madness in AK’s story is reminiscent of Pearl Jam. During concert, the chief rocker threw himself into a sea of his excited fans. They lifted him overhead, he barely made it back onstage. Pearl Jam was a grunge rock group from Seattle, they had a song entitled, “Porch”. At one of their rock concerts in Europe approximately 9 people were trampled to death.
Posted by Hopeful on 04/15/10 at 01:00 AM | #
Barbie Nadeau seems to be the only journalist reporting from Perugia to come up with the goods. She wrote what many already suspected: the family of Amanda Knox manipulates public opinion by controlling to some extent the media (with the help from David Marriott of course) and profiting financially from the murder of Meredith Kercher.
In one word: disgusting.
I applaud Barbie Latza Nadeau for having the courage to write about her experiences with the Knox/Mellas camp.
Posted by Nell on 04/15/10 at 04:23 AM | #
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