Friday, March 07, 2014

Obstruction Of Justice? How The Guardian Poisons Public Opinion Against The Italian Courts

Posted by Our Main Posters



[Alan Rusbridger has been the overall Guardian editor throughout the whole period described]

1. How the Guardian got itself on a roll

The Guardian has a daily UK print run of around 180,000 which places it 12th among Britain’s 13 national newspapers. (Last is The Independent, which may soon fold.) The Murdoch-owned Sun has a print run more than 10 times the Guardian’s. The Daily Mail’s print run is 9 times, the Mirror’s is five times, and the Times’s is two times.

Seemingly stuck at the back, the Guardian has worked hard to get a lot of people to beat a path to its website, especially Americans, and to become addicted to it. Website readers now run neck-and-neck with its hardcopy readers. Its website comes second in readers among UK newspapers after the Daily Mail, thanks largely to those Americans, and that jumps the overall readership of the Guardian from 12th to 5th place in the United Kingdom.

In another attempt to boost circulation, the Guardian has become triumphally missionary. It is doing a lot more than the old-fashioned reporting which most other UK newspapers stick to. The Guardian assisted Julian Assange’s Wikileaks to publish a number of secret documents “borrowed” from governments, although it has since turned on him and has been attacking him and Wikileaks ever since.

The Guardian also spearheaded the media investigation into the phone-hacking by Robert Murdoch’s News Of The World which led to that newspaper’s demise and the ongoing parliamentary and police investigations into other phone hacking by other Murdoch media vehicles.

2. The Guardian’s substantial pro-Knox campaign

The Guardian’s campaign against Italian justice on behalf of Amanda Knox is another triumphalist campaign, but this one often takes it very far away from the truth, and almost certainly outside Italian law. Less obviously a campaign at first glance, but undeniably one in progress when one connects up the dots as we shall do. 

The resources the Guardian allocates to it are quite astonishing. Since 2007 the Guardian newspaper and website have been averaging several long reports, videos, opinion pieces or brief mentions every day for a grand total according to Google’s site-search application of over fifty thousand separate items.

Well over a dozen reporters have their names over stories and opinion pieces, and some have filed reports from London, Seattle and Italy that now number in the dozens and dozens.  At least three of the Knox PR shills (Nina Burleigh, Doug Preston and Andrew Gumbel) have managed to have over-the-top opinion pieces published in the Guardian,  with no explanation at all of their vested interests and family links. 

Only the volume of the Daily Mail’s coverage of the case comes anywhere near the Guardian’s - and the Daily Mail coverage shows little sign of being a consistent campaign. The Mail publishes pro-Knox and anti-Knox trivia and gossip and photos with equal enthusiasm, and attracts frequent irritation from the pro-Knox forces.

In sharp contrast to these two UK newspapers, the top American newspapers and websites have averaged at most one-fifth the number of items since 2007 and, with the possible exception of CNN, none of them seem nearly as fixated upon the Knox cause as the Guardian is.

From late 2007 to around mid-trial in 2009 the Guardian was about as even-handed and tentative in its coverage as the Times was. Then bias suddenly moved into overdrive. These headlines below are representative of the Guardian’s coverage from mid-2009 to the present day.

3. Notice the typical pro-Knox headline bias here

  • 2009 “Amanda will get out eventually” exclusive interview with mother Edda Mellas | Hattenstone

  • 2009 The friends back home intent on telling the ‘real Amanda Knox’ story | Paul Harris

  • 2009 Police beat me, Amanda Knox tells jury as she takes her turn in the witness box | Kington

  • 2009 Cold comfort in jail as Amanda Knox begins 26-year sentence | Kington

  • 2010 Unanswered questions over Amanda Knox’s conviction | Deborah Orr

  • 2011 Amanda Knox ‘crucified’ for crime she did not commit, lawyer tells court | Hooper

  • 2011 Amanda Knox begs judges to ‘do justice’ in emotional final plea | Hooper + Kington

  • 2011 Confident and optimistic, Amanda Knox waits to hear the final verdict | Kington

  • 2011 Amanda Knox was a ‘faithful woman in love’ says defence lawyer | Hooper

  • 2011 Yes, Amanda Knox is guilty. Guilty of being sexually active and female | Carole Cadwalladr

  • 2011 Amanda Knox ‘could make millions from TV and press deals’ | Lisa O’Carroll

  • 2013 My penpal Amanda Knox and me | Simon Hattenstone

  • 2013 Amanda Knox: I went to jail naive and came out an introspective woman | Esther Adley

  • 2013 Amanda Knox: what happened to me could have happened to anyone | Shiv Malik

  • 2013 Read all about Amanda Knox ““ except in neurotic Britain | Nick Cohen

  • 2014 Amanda Knox will not return to Italy to serve sentence, say parents | Lizzy Davies

  • 2014 Amanda Knox: ‘They’ll have to pull me back kicking and screaming to prison’ | Hattenstone

  • 2014 Amanda Knox: I feel stranded and trapped since new guilty verdict | Hattenstone

  • 2014 Amanda Knox vows to fight Meredith Kercher murder conviction ‘to the end’ | Hooper etc


4. Notice the typical anti-Italy headline bias here

  • 2009 Amanda Knox case is typical of Italy’s inconclusive justice | Tobias Jones

  • 2009 Call for solitary confinement of pair accused of killing Meredith Kercher | Kington

  • 2009 Cold comfort in jail as Amanda Knox begins 26-year sentence | Kington

  • 2010 Amanda Knox appeal: ‘Italians are embarrassed by this case’ | Preston

  • 2010 Unanswered questions over Amanda Knox’s conviction | Deborah Orr

  • 2011 Amanda Knox: victim of Italian code which puts saving face before justice | Preston

  • 2011 Amanda Knox is a witch? Sorry, are we living in 1486? | Joan Smith

  • 2011 Amanda Knox trial was flawed at every turn, says appeal judge | Kington

  • 2011 Amanda Knox: police under fire over botched investigation | Hooper

  • 2011 Amanda Knox’s lawyers hit back at police and prosecutors | Hooper

  • 2011 Amanda Knox ‘is lucky Italy doesn’t have death penalty’ | Hooper

  • 2011 Amanda Knox case is typical of Italy’s inconclusive justice | Tobias Jones

  • 2011 Amanda Knox: what next after 1,450 days of wrongful imprisonment? | Hooper

  • 2013 Amanda Knox’s retrial puts Italian justice in the dock | Joan Smith

  • 2013 Knife key to Amanda Knox trial had no trace of Meredith Kercher’s blood | Lizzie Davies

  • 2014 Knox and Sollecito case delivers harsh verdict on Italian justice | Andrew Gumbel


5. Meredith’s friends demand extreme bias be ended

This unprecedented objection to the Editor of the Guardian which had been signed by over 100 of Meredith’s friends was published on Tuesday 4 February.

The Guardian’s repeated casting of the Meredith Kercher murder trial as a gross miscarriage of justice for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is disturbing (Reports, 1-4 February). Undoubtedly, the case is complex and shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty. However, there are at least three points which are certain.

1) During the pre-trial, trial proper, and retrial, different judges and juries have, after close and prolonged examination of all the evidence, concluded there is enough evidence against the defendants to find them guilty of the murder charge against them.

2) The appeal in which the defendants were acquitted was overturned after the supreme court found it to have “multiple shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies” and that the “evidence against [the defendants] had been underestimated”.

3) At the same time as she was originally found guilty of murder, Amanda Knox was also found guilty of slander and subsequently sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for having accused an innocent man of the crime. Although acquitted of murder on appeal, the slander charge was upheld.

At the time of the acquittal, Ms Knox had spent four years in jail, ie she effectively served the slander sentence while on remand. Therefore, she has not in fact served any time in prison for a crime she did not commit (although the same could not be said for Mr Sollecito if the final outcome of the legal process were to find him not guilty).

Assertions such as those made by Andrew Gumbel (himself a co-author of Sollecito’s autobiography) that Knox and Sollecito have been reconvicted “without a shred of evidence to substantiate the verdict” are untrue and undermine the gravity of the case, as does a one-sided interview with Ms Knox during which the evidence against her is barely addressed.

Only those in the courtroom are in possession of the full facts; it is only they who should make pronouncements on what the outcome should or should not be. Until then, the best course of action would be to wait for the (admittedly, grindingly slow) Italian legal process to come to its conclusion.

Guardian staffer Chris Elliot (image below) offered only a whiny and dishonest response. Our next post will start with that in identifying the Guardian’s many illegalities.


Posted by Our Main Posters on 03/07/14 at 10:39 PM in Hoaxers: media groupsUK Guardian

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Comments

Beautifully put. Objective, Civilised, & Necessary.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 03/08/14 at 03:45 PM | #

The Guardian’s website has a big readership in the US. It is center to left-leaning. I guess people at the center to left-leaning news outlets such as the Guardian, CBS, New York Times, CNN think that the case against Knox is championed by conservatives who dislike her way of life. It is more about fighting against conservatives who dislike people like Knox. All the criticism of her way of life turn these people into her supporters.

I think her way of life is not really very relevant to this case. We should have gone deeper than that to find out what caused her to have committed this crime. It is her world view and her personality and psyche that have contributed to this.

Posted by janenewyork on 03/08/14 at 03:56 PM | #

My personal opinion is that “theguardian” not really pro-Amanda but only “pro-business”. They will not hesitate to switch their side if the public in the US wants that! They just care about the number of hits and the bottom line.

Professional journalism is dead. Nobody has the time to do an investigation- it is far more convenient to print the handout verbatim.

Posted by chami on 03/08/14 at 04:08 PM | #

chami, not all of Knox’s media supporters are after money. They could have supported Knox because they have been thinking that Knox was vilified and convicted because of her way of life, which is their way of life, too. They are basically thinking that their way of life is being on trial. That may also partly explain why they think that whoever thinks Knox is guilty is anti-American.

Posted by janenewyork on 03/08/14 at 04:44 PM | #

Janeatwork
Hi there.

Ah the rise of paranoia and xenophobia. Still I believe that you and Chami are right. For example Richard Murdocks modus operandi with the News of the world and other news outlets he owns, is and always was. “News is boring. Write sensationalism, and if there is no news then invent it, that way you will sell news”

The guardians pro Knox stance will change of course because the truth will eventually all come out. This will not stop. So therefore I see a tremendous backlash against Knox who will be pilloried for have fooled those people who have bought into her story. Once again the guardian will do a rapid change in copy in order to remain relevant and sell sell sell.

The SAS motto is “Who dares wins” but there is another one which is “Always expect the unexpected.” I believe eventually that Knox herself will do something stupid and thereby her complete house of cards will come tumbling down. That may take a while but as time passes and Sollecito and Guede talk more and more the noose of guilt will ever tighten around her neck.

Then there is still the testimony of Kokomani to come out and she must know this. Therefore the guardian sensationalist copy will end and since the average readers concentration span is less than a thirty second sound bite, the past will not impact as the Knox supporters hope and pray for, because they must know that her days are numbered.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/14 at 06:27 PM | #

Hi janenewyork - Like your suggestion that Knox’s media supporters could have supported Knox because they have been thinking that Knox was vilified and convicted because of her way of life, which is their way of life, too.

The TJMK Main Posters are right about How The Guardian Poisons Public Opinion Against The Italian Courts.

Your suggestion is convincing as to Why the Poison works.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 03/08/14 at 07:08 PM | #

I remember The Guardian in the 1960s and 1970s.( I am from South England.) It could be described then as a thoughtful paper for the middle class intelligentsia . It was aghast at communism, and the philistinism involved in mass socialism. It had sympathetic interviews with Russian dissidents, artists - now safely in the West.
It questioned, politely, the assumptions of what was known then as ‘The Establishment’, while at the same time honouring its foundation. For example, I remember the spread all over the paper at Sir Winston’s Churchill’s funeral. It was read by Liberals, a minority political party that no longer exists (it has been subsumed).

Nowadays, it is an entirely different entity. Without exception, if I hear the phrase ‘a Guardian reader’ among any of the people I know, - this is meant as a derogatory comment. It is as if the paper is now a pastiche of its former self.
It must be due to multiple social factors, but not least the general demise of printed copy, and probably desperate finances, (as mentioned by chami.)

There is the sensationalizing - although The Times now too resorts to this - but also a marked tendency to jump onto even a whiff of ‘conspiracy’ - especially by the Big Bad Establishment. A ‘Guardian reader’ is more likely to :
support Julian Assange; be vegetarian and/or support Fair Trade; dislike/distrust the armed forces, and not want to ‘waste’ money on Trident etc; be anti-competition in education, and dislike testing; a fair chance they may have studied Media Studies, Dance, or, Gender Studies, and yes, Creative Writing at ‘Uni’. And so on. They may very well have a relaxed attitude towards recreational drugs, and declare themselves ‘Secularists’.
While all these attributes have virtues in themselves, the G-reader is often recognizable by their intolerance of other viewpoints or attitudes. This is in complete opposition to the liberal of yesteryear, whose main attribute was in fact true tolerance, and respect for the individual.
I have been aggressively shouted down for even attempting to meekly suggest there might be some validity to a differing belief.
Sometimes their children - always ‘kids’ - are never restrained in any way, as no-one must ‘interfere with their power’. (This was actually said to me.) The empowerment of their child seems to be paramount.(cf: Knox’s emphasis on her mother encouraging her ‘free spirit’).

I am hoping the above will give a little background, and put the Knox issues into some context.
One thing though, that doesn’t quite tally. The ‘typical’ G reader (please forgive the necessary generalizations) is far more likely, in my experience in England, to be anti-American than other-paper readers…so the Knox supporters must, generally, be coming from somewhere else.
I suspect it is jumping in the deep end, and making sweeping assumptions without pausing enough to read the minutiae ...and then being too sure that this has been a Dreadful Miscarriage of Justice….and so as enlightened, progressive beings Of Course We Must Support her.

Perhaps, at some point, the pendulum will indeed swing just as far the other way (as Grahame suggests)... And then : as enlightened progressive beings Of Course there must be Pursuit of Justice etc, etc…
One hopes so.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 03/08/14 at 08:04 PM | #

It never hurts to ask the editor a question or two (I just did) - he might even reply!

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Posted by Odysseus on 03/08/14 at 08:43 PM | #

@janenewyork

I agree only partly. When you say “because of her way of life”, I understand that only her sex life was questioned and answered. But her way of life is nothing uncommon in western Europe and I believe it is more common in Europe than in the US (and New York, New York).

And it takes two to tango. If we are here to damn her (I am not) for her way of life, we should not forget that there were 10 men who also should be damned. I personally may not like her lifestyle, but then I work with young people and I perhaps understand them better. It is a kind of rebellion (her choice of lifestyle).

I often use money in a generalized sense and I use money to mean reward. The potential value of money is realized only when you exchange it for some goods or services (and for some exceptional people making money itself is the reward and only money can beget more money).

As Grahame Rhodes did explain later, sensationalization is akin to intellectual pleasure and is a kind of reward in some sense.

She does have some strange attraction and many men feel weak in their head (and heart) which I cannot describe well but understand (they are popularly called man-eater) which is never reciprocated but always exploited.

Posted by chami on 03/08/14 at 09:53 PM | #

As the years have passed I have become ever more engrossed with the intellect and quiet assessment here rather than the screams of innocence from the pro Knox sites. It is really quite embarrassing that they do not have the ability to be introspective in formulating an opinion, but rather think that because they shout Innocent loudly enough then that must be true. If they had the wherewithal to correlate/formulate the evidence then there can be no doubt as to the guilt of both Amanda Knox and Raphael Sollecito.

There is a laziness in this world brought about by the desire for instant gratification. You can see this because people now don’t talk to each other face to face they just use their thumbs. There was a time when peoples intentions and motives were born out by their facial expression and signals were picked up in many ways to confirm that. Not now though, because lies can be disseminated and broadcast so easily, hence this discussion regarding the Guardian Newspaper. It’s sad that there is so little interchange of personal communication without having to rely upon machines no matter how good they are. Therefore I personally find great gratification in the thoughtful machinations of the people who write herein and I thank you for that.

There will be no let up with reference to the promotion of this site and others
and that is the difference here. The people who are convinced of the innocence of both Knox and Sollecito are generally in it for their own self gratification because between us and the them we value intelligence far more than they do. They just want to be right and to hell with the truth, given their desire to be right because they feel that they are under personal attack themselves. Jane is correct here as is Chami as is Seekingunderstanding. The point being that everyone here has some sort of an objective viewpoint, and therefore is a contributor to the truth.

Finally thank you Peter for everything you do and will keep on doing to bring the truth forward into as many places as we can.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/09/14 at 12:18 AM | #

What Cardiol said. Great post about Guardian’s infamous campaign. @janenewyork, I totally agree that Amanda Knox’s rebellious, no restraint lifestyle draws similar supporters. The Guardian writes what Americans want to hear mainly to boost circulation but perhaps to champion the underdog and free spirit that Knox has been painted.

No, Knox was not a free spirit, just the opposite. She was in emotional bondage. She was a broken person from a broken home.

She created a crime family to replace her Seattle family.

Her sister Deanna’s birth preceded her father’s departure. She may have repressed anger at her mother and sister both for this.

Guede had a very dysfunctional family, Raf did too. All three of them tried to create a new family with new rules: no rules.

They proceeded to break the first rule of mankind, not to kill. They formed a social suicide pact so they could resurrect as new people.

Knox sensed it would all lead to headlines. She would become a celebrity. She would finally get the attention. She is a writer, Raf became a writer, Rudy wrote letters.

Newspaper and TV may be the entire reason Knox dared to kill Meredith. She wanted endless publicity. Despite the faux shyness of Raf he has acclimatized quickly to fame and notoriety, he now craves it.

Like Ursula the seawitch in Disney’s Little Mermaid, Knox has risen up on her tentacles from underwater waving her sceptre of PR and websites to sway public opinion.

Knox symbolically killed a sister and mother. So did Raf, while Rudy got rid of his symbolic mother. Perhaps Rudy has a sister in Africa or half-sister, who knows?

Three emotional orphans became an Italian crime family.

This is the Italian dream Amanda subconsciously had, to invalidate her mother’s traditional lifestyle.

Knox wanted a more powerful role, one in which she could also punish her father with his pennypinching account books at Macy’s while she and mom scrimped. She wanted to be like a Mafia don who controls the fate of others and gets rich in the process, so she married into it by embracing Raffaele.

This crime is about money and status and attention seeking by three people who felt invisible and at crisis point.

Knox didn’t want to identify with the powerlessness of her mother nor a conventional teacher.

Knox wants a new family, neither German nor American nor English since she kills a symbol of that nation. She turns to Italy land of the Vatican.

By a triple pact the murdering friends can all have something terrible on each other like the secrets in families. They become conspirators and form something bigger than any one of them alone.

They betray all three original families to forge a fourth, to replicate the shaky, untested ground they felt they grew up in but that this time might yield potential.

Knox does bigger if not “better” than mom, leaving her home country for Europe exactly opposite direction of Edda’s trek, in a bizarre attempt to separate from her mother but can’t like an evil twin, both born in July.

Knox moves outside the prescribed female role to throw off her shackles. Neither Raf nor Rudy knows what a positive female role should be, perhaps never felt a comforting one without shadows. Amanda would be to Rudy like the distant uncaring mother back in Ivory Coast. She would be to Raffaele an overpowering presence that wanted to keep him small.


@SeekingUnderstanding, very interesting comment that depicts The Guardian as morphing over the last 50 years from a liberal but truly tolerant philosophy in a thinker’s newspaper to very different vibe that dances on what’s happening now, with changed values.

It cannot be stressed enough that Mr. John Kercher is himself a journalist, and it was his daughter who was killed. Meredith was said to have considered becoming a journalist herself. Therefore we now have the journalism and newspaper wars involved in her case. Mr. Kercher reported on celebrities, and despite Amanda Knox thinking she is a celebrity, it is really Meredith Kercher who is the timeless celebrity in all her unfading beauty of character as well as face.

Posted by Hopeful on 03/09/14 at 01:01 AM | #

Thank you Hopeful it’s thoughtfulness and insight such as yours that was the reason for my comment.
Incidentally, I fully agree with you that the parallel between Knox and a mafia family is paramount. Unfortunately for them this crime was committed in Italy where they have more than a bowing acquaintance with crime families.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/09/14 at 01:39 AM | #

Just to be clear, Amanda Knox’s “way of life” is just a smoke screen, used by *her friends* to divert attention from the real issue: the murder.

I have seen a complete pig who was accused of poisoning the heart and soul of an entire nation with poems, grandiose speeches serving an illegitimate & criminal regime, and generally licking the boots of a now-dead dictator, after narrowly escaping a lynching by a furious mob—he appeared on TV surrounded by his buddies and said: “An elderly lady accused me of being a drunk. Let me come clear on this: Madam, I don’t even like alcohol, I haven’t touched a drink in 30 years!”. He was subsequently rehabilitated and spent his last 20 years as a senator in the new regime, until his natural death. QED.

Posted by Bjorn on 03/09/14 at 07:19 AM | #

The myth about Knox’s so-called rebellious lifestyle and it impressing anyone anywhere is simply that: a PR myth and another reporting shortfall.

Young girls were not ever lining up to become another Knox or disapproving authorities lining up to put her away.

Prior to November 2007 Knox’s so-called rebellious lifestyle seems to have won her little admiration and few real friends. She was known for lack of hygiene and drug use and a sharp tongue and tin ear but where is any glamor (or punk glamor) in that?

It is claimed that she was an honor student at her school but there seems zero record of that - in fact images of her at graduation show no honor ribbons at all.  She lied in her book about the amazingness of her study ambitions in Europe. Her real ambitions seem to have been, well, daily men and daily drugs: 

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/questions_for_knox_3_why_the_huge_lie/

Italy is full of women who run rings around the dumpy, self-absorbed Knox in every respect and set global standards for smart, vivacious and chic. They were the ones to catch every eye; not the slightly frantic leech Knox. 

In less than one month in Perugia her social circle had sharply dwindled, down to more or less one, RS, and that relationship wasnt going so well. She had ticked off all her flatmates and the customers at the Le Chic bar.

After her arrest was announced, few who knew her in Seattle would talk with the press on her behalf, and several were reported to have said in effect “that figures” and were unsurprised at her involvement.

Signs of the glamorous carefree lifestyle that seems to have imbued Nina Burleigh (a timid little shrimp who I have met) with envious awe are pretty hard to find. None of knox’s few boyfriends impress.

Her stint on the stand caused the Italian reaction described here:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/italy_shrugs_why_the_defendants_testimony_seems_to_have_been_a_real_fl/

And the carefreeness and glamor and liberation that the Carole Cadwalladrs babble on about seems envy about a figment of their imaginations, nothing more, and fail as a cause for fem liberation.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/09/carole-cadwalladr-amanda-knox-kercher

Knox’s demeanour at the Hellmann appeal and in her book was 180 degrees reversed from what we saw at trial, by the way. But the court is no less hard-line.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/09/14 at 07:50 PM | #

The Guardian has done some decent reporting in the past, but they also have a tendency to throw some outrageous trash in the mix (a very recent example is a pro-Putin piece published last week which must have raised some eyebrows). 

Unfortunately, their reporting on Meredith Kercher’s case has included only the latter.  I’m not sure why, since they certainly don’t cater to conservative audiences, in the US or elsewhere, and Knox’ supporters generally fall in this category. 

I’m guessing Chami is right in that they are playing multiple angles in order to maximize readership and may turn on Knox once they figure that the sympathetic angle has been sufficiently milked.

It’s disappointing, but maybe once they realize how much they’ve been missing the mark, they’ll assign a real reporter to this case.  Falling behind complete garbage papers like Daily Mail is shameful.

Posted by Vivianna on 03/09/14 at 10:36 PM | #

It is my belief that Amanda Knox feels that she had every right to kill Meredith or as Aleiser Crowley the satanist said “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole law.”

In other words Knox feels she can do what ever she wants and always could provided she could fool her mother and anyone else she choose including now the media and her supporters. There is a coloration between Knox and Sollecito in this. The fact that apart from their dysfunctional families Sollecito lost a mother. Knox lost a father and she has resented him, plus his replacement Chris Mellas and dislikes her mother for doing so.

In other words Knox in her psychosis is the patron saint of the emotionally disturbed who see her as a mirror image of themselves. Then there are those who just like to post disgusting comments. These are the people who call us ‘haters’ since they have a strong hatred themselves and thereby show their own neurosis. You can almost see them pulling out their hair, their constant daily hatred of life, their pacing, freaking out as a ‘normal’ course of their lives.

A prime example is Michelle Moore and others who obviously are delusional and want two things. The most important is to be right and the second one is for us to be wrong. They will twist everything they can in order to delude themselves into believing and not excepting the truth that they have been lied to. This is born out by the fact that without any research at all they come up with a hypothesis which suites their desire to protect Knox who they see as the victim.

This is why in the fullness of time the entire truth of this will come out and Knox and Sollecito will be in jail and their supports will, except for a few nuts, simply fade away only to be incensed once more at the latest
salacious trial.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/09/14 at 10:38 PM | #

I have lived in NYC and it’s suburbs for nearly 40 years. My father was a journalist for a major publication. My neighbors and friends are New York Times & Wall Street Journal reporters and CBS, NBC, and ABC employees. As in almost any profession in NYC, the community of workers becomes incestuous.

Take for example the case of the blackmail of David Letterman: Robert “Joe” Halderman, the producer of CBS’s 48 Hours “Amanda Knox: The untold story”

David Letterman and Joe Halderman were sleeping with the same intern!

The editor on that TV episode was my next door neighbor.

Guess who used to work as a reporter for CBS in Seattle? David Marriott!

Guess who edited the Dateline NBC TV episode: “The Trial of Amanda Knox”?

Sam (Saverio) Camporeale, first cousin of Dr. Francesco Sollecito, the co-accused’s father! Rafaelle Sollecito was staying with this cousin when he was in NY.

I’m so sick of the media’s role in this murder case. It’s not about conservative vs liberal, it has nothing to do with “the tabloids portrayal of Amanda Knox’s lifestyle”, that’s the story created by David Marriott!!

It’s a murder trial for God’s sake!!

It’s about the evidence shown in court that has found them guilty, repeatedly!

Posted by bedelia on 03/10/14 at 12:03 AM | #

Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian went out to Seattle in late January 2014 to await Knox’s reaction to the Florence ruling. He stayed several days.

He met her in a café of her choosing on the first day. Then the next day he went over to her apartment where we saw the footage of Madison and Knox having tea with Hattenstone.

That was when Madison answered his question of whether she had ever suspected Knox of murder in the slightest, with words to the effect of No, but anyone is capable of anything.

A day or two later Amanda called him and informed Hattenstone that the paparazzi were all around her mom’s house, but he was invited over there to await the January 30th appeal verdict with her family and friends.

He said that Chris Mellas was there making a beef and gherkin salad. Deanna had a cold. Two dogs were running around. Ryan Henderson? the recently released guy wrongfully convicted for a murder was also at the house.

Madison was there, often going to the windows to peek out at the media. Chris and the family kept telling Knox to cry or hit the walls or whatever she needed to do to release her emotions. Knox said that was “self-indulgent.” She preferred to keep a stiff upper lip.

So as you see Mr. Hattenstone detailed everything about the tense wait for the Nencini verdict, as he had detailed the interview at the café.

However, he refused to detail Knox’s reaction to the verdict. Not one word. He glided on to the next paragraph without the slightest explanation for the omission.

In this he showed his bias towards Knox by leaving the reader hanging as he refused to print one word of Knox’s reaction to the second guilty verdict.

Obviously Hattenstone was there at the Mellox house that day hoping instead for a Woo Hoo innocent yell from the Florence judge and a full celebration with high fives and corks popping. I’m sure he’d have happily reported on Knox’s reaction to that kind of verdict in great detail.

Yet despite the need for honesty and objectivity in reporting, he completely skips over her and the family’s reaction. He showed his true colors: pro-Knox.

He has fallen for her Bambi act. She corresponded with him in prison letters several years ago and asked about his kids, signed his letters with butterflies and drawings of her hands, signing off to him, “I’m in your hands.” Now several years later he remains biased in her favor.

In my opinion he felt her disappointment about the Florence ruling as if it were his own. He has lost objectivity as a reporter.

Posted by Hopeful on 03/10/14 at 02:40 AM | #

Thank you for your posts and comments, everybody, (thank you, Peter 😊), I will read them again, and again, and again, bedelia and Hopeful, I am particularly shaken by your info, to put it very mildly. Jesus!

Posted by Bjorn on 03/10/14 at 06:41 AM | #

Interesting reading Seeking Understanding on the Guardian - a fair summation.

I’ve wanted to keep politics out of the Meredith business and largely that has been done.  Many’s the time I wanted to point out the parallels with the FoAKers and a certain political mindset but bit the lip and wrote nothing, even at my own place.

At PMF, certain people of that political persuasion tried to cherry pick and misrepresent an issue which had nothing to do with Meredith and it was best not to engage any further.

IMHO, the Meredith issue transcends politics - I know Peter and I don’t agree on larger issues but on this one - Meredith - we are at one.  It really should remain that way.

Methinks we’re very close to the endgame now and should not falter at this late stage.

Posted by James Higham on 03/10/14 at 01:40 PM | #

Hi James

That amused me. You have given us three excellent main posts here and many here also read at your own place.

http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/

Like many in the UN now or formerly I rather wish everything transcended politics or at least political parties and warring camps.  For humanity to pull out of the hole it is getting itself into warring camps is less than fruitful and we all could be best advised to take the long view (longer than political cycles).

Faith in institutions does matter and will soon matter more, and although some in some countries dont deserve that, Italy’s are far from the worst one can encounter. I think the Italian justice system is about as good as that anywhere, and American lawyers and judges who really know it dont disagree.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/10/14 at 02:59 PM | #

Miss Burleigh Regrets….?

In Yesterday’s NYT Book Review, Nina Burleigh reviewed “The Journalist and the Masquerader” , by Walter Kirn, a self-described “epic suck-up” Author, “craving for affirmation” who was duped by a psychopathic killer into writing most favorably about the killer.

Burleigh writes:

...writers are no better equipped than cops and prosecutors to know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Kirn pondered all this at his former friend’s murder trial, where he learned more than he could have imagined about (the killer’s) shape-shifting history.

Although the murder horrifies him, you get the impression that Kirn is more upset about being gulled. “I wasn’t a victim, I was a collaborator,” he concludes.

At one point, Kirn does call (the killer) a “savage,” but the bloody crime he’s convicted of is, in the end, the part of the story about which we, and Kirn, care the least.

The image of the trickster incubus invading his own imagination haunts the writer. In the end, his book isn’t about the fake (killer) but about the mysteries of Kirn’s — and by extension, our — ­response to him.

“That Walter Kirn is one shrewd judge of character,” he writes, ruefully adding: “This had never been said of me.”

Nina Burleigh’s most recent book is “The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox.”

 

Posted by Cardiol MD on 03/10/14 at 03:07 PM | #

If it’s not Regret, its unconscious Self-Parody.

Is Burleigh Unable to Lunch Today?

Posted by Cardiol MD on 03/10/14 at 03:51 PM | #

Hi Cardiol

Amazing. Highly watchable. Daggers are being drawn all over the place.

Nina Burleigh as she admitted was unqualified in any angle relevant to this case and doesnt speak Italian. Her other books were on antiquities.

She first went to Perugia in spring 2009 during trial and I was warned she was being seen 100% with the Knox forces.

But she told me mid-2009 she was chilled (along with everybody in court) at hearing how Knox talked about Meredith on the witness stand. Also that returning to Italy could mean selling her house in the country.

Then another u-turn. She stayed months and months in Italy and hired an assistant. Who paid? Either she moved onto the Knox payroll or David Anderson was giving her free B&B at his guesthouse.

She came to write Time pieces more and more poisonous toward the Italians. She certainly ambushed Mignini; and swallowed someone’s line hook-line-and-sinker on Rudy Guede.

And now this.

She may have fallen out with the Knoxes or been edged away from access to Amanda like several others. Her book was quite tart in places toward the Knoxes which may have closed doors for her. Or she may finally have sat down and absorbed the hard evidence.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/10/14 at 05:39 PM | #

As goes Frank Sforza so goes Nina Burleigh and as time goes forward and the money dries up I predict (And hope of course) that there will be more rats leaving the sinking ship.

I was always of the opinion that the only way for the Knox family and accompanying sleaze to recuperate their losses was to have Knox admit to her part in the murder. That way all the sensational media outlets will once more be in full flight and selling all the salacious news, no doubt claiming that Knox has been brainwashed or has suffered a nervous breakdown due to all the nasty Italian legal system. Of course Curt Knox and Chris Mellias will milk this for all it’s worth.

After all when you consider how Curt Knox treated his daughter it would not be surprising.
Also I am reminded of the money Knox owes to Patrick Lamumba which has never been forthcoming and of course never will be.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/10/14 at 06:03 PM | #

Pete - you’ll have to stop encouraging us.

If it’s conscious Self-Parody, then she of course admits, what cannot be denied - Smoke got in her Eyes.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 03/10/14 at 10:24 PM | #

Hi Grahame, You so right, the money’s getting tight.

Hopeful…wow.
Thanks TJMK, always.

Posted by Bettina on 03/11/14 at 05:54 AM | #

The photos of Knox and Casey Anthony having a good time strike a responsive chord with me.
That is because I see so much similarity between the two and if you check it out there seems to be more than two individuals just having a good time.
There is something disquieting at about them both. I could say the same about Karla Homolka or is it just my imagination that there something else going on here. Perhaps it’s the eyes and the none expression which although looking happy on the surface is guarded and defensive underneath. This before anything happened to them both of course not now.
Strange to relate Edda has the same look as well. All I see among the men is a combination of hate and disgust and violence. That is except Knox’s current boyfriend who comes across as being none existent or hardly there at all. Obviously flavor of the month for Knox.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/11/14 at 05:21 PM | #

I cannot possibly take The Guardian seriously after their reports on this case. When I read Amanda Knox had attended something called the “Seafairer Clown Parade,” I nearly died laughing. There’s was a JP Patches float at the Seafair Torchlight Parade, but that’s not what was published. If your reporters mess up such simple, well-known facts, why should I believe you when you argue for the innocence of Knox and Sollecito?

Posted by ladymcbain on 03/13/14 at 08:25 AM | #

Chris Elliott has the archetypal face of the hard-bitten journalist. Alcoholic nose and eyes, etc. I would guess that nothing matters to him as much as keeping his job and thereby repressing personal insecurities (with the help of the odd drink or ten).

Producing copy on demand is now the name of the journalistic game, never mind the author’s own take on the subject. It used to be called slavery but these are straitened times and we’re all slaves now Mr Elliott aren’t we? Glad we didn’t have to rely on you for the Watergate revelations.

On a larger scale, somehow Elliott sums up the current human malaise. Everyone is scared shitless of losing such robotic jobs as they’ve managed to grab and consequently afraid of expressing any personal views if there’s any marginal danger of upsetting the employer.

This will pass. Interesting times…

Posted by Odysseus on 03/13/14 at 06:19 PM | #

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