Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Not For The First Time Has Zombie-Like Behavior Afflicted American Crime Reporting
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart commenting on the media’s role in the Duke Lacrosse framing case 12 April 2007]
The headline yesterday on the NY Times’s Perugia reporting: “Appeal Trial Of Amanda Knox Opens In Italy”.
You can see the image in one of yesterday’s posts. Believe it or not the paper version of the NY Times today includes the exact same headline. We have been getting the NY Times delivered for over 20 years and swear by most of the reporting.
For some reason its crime reporting really sucks.
The Times’s poor crime reporting is a direct cause of my knowing about Meredith. I was following another gladiator battle between one solitary blog and a lot of ranting media, the NY Times included, over accusations of group rape by the male lacrosse team at Duke University.
Nearly a year after it was obvious that the woman and the prosecutor were framing the team, the NY Times STILL took the position that there was strong cause - that they were really guilty. The trial would simply rubber-stamp this.
Other media followed the NY Times’s lead in this, as they often do in the US. See above. This caused untold havoc in the lives of the boys and untold millions in legal fees and the boys will have a cloud over them for life.
Commenters on that blog (Durham in Wonderland) said maybe the same thing was going on here - maybe in Meredith’s case there was a media rush to judgment that Knox and Sollecito were being framed.
The NY Times has never ever published a kind word about Meredith or her family or supported the Italian authorities in their unenviable task. The only examples of reports that we point to of the NY Times are truly mischievous and contemptible. Take a look at these for example.
How The New York Times Caused Unneccesary And Unhelpful Anger In Italy
The Second Misleading New York Times Comment On The Case
Had the NY Times said the case is in order as it should have done 18 months ago the wild pro-Knox ride of the rest of the American media would have been cut off at the ankles. The NY Times allowed the mishievous floodgates to open.
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We have the conclusion of the DNA review. It will be posted on TJMK later today.
Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry A Deeply Ugly, Inaccurate And Callous Piece Of Junk By Nathaniel Rich In “Rolling Stone”
Or to previous entry Rachel Sterne’s Ground Report: Anonymous Editors, Anonymous Posters, Now Anonymous Lawyers Too? DRAFT