The press fails miserably. Again.
Like the Miami terror arrests, and the New York tunnel plot, and possibly even the UK bomb plot, the arrest of that guy in the Jon Benet Ramsey case was seen by the media as a chance to saturate the news with breathless and interminable coverage of a story about which there were serious misgivings from the start-- at least from anyone who cared enough to do a little digging. Apparently most mainstream journalists don't fit that description.
We're all used to being let down by the press these days, and especially cable news stations. And although it's Monday morning quarterbacking to mention it, I was satisfied that the suspect had nothing to do with the crime more than a week ago. There seemed to be plenty of inconsistencies in the story, but no actual evidence. We might expect the media to ignore news in favor of sensationalism these days, but some solid criticism never hurts.
Samples of Karr's DNA had been taken upon his arrival in Boulder on Thursday and they were tested at the Denver Police Department's crime lab over the weekend. Despite his insistence that he killed Ramsey -- and the 10-day media frenzy that has followed -- the tests have failed to put him at the scene of the crime and he may be released entirely by the end of the week.
What is amazing to me is the media circus that has followed this "case" for almost two weeks now without really a shred of proof that anything had truly developed in the 10-year-old mystery. And we're not just talking about an informational mention on page six or seven of the local newspaper, or a 90-second story buried in the second half of a one-hour newscast.
We're talking about hour upon hour of coverage, with some cable news networks devoting the entire hour of a 60-minute newscast to a developing story that could very well have turned out to be a lot of noise about nothing. We're talking about alleged journalists and editors whose judgment made them decide that John Mark Karr's plane ride from Thailand to the United States, where he sat, who he talked to, what he ate and even what procedure was used to allow him to use the bathroom was their very top story.
We're all used to being let down by the press these days, and especially cable news stations. And although it's Monday morning quarterbacking to mention it, I was satisfied that the suspect had nothing to do with the crime more than a week ago. There seemed to be plenty of inconsistencies in the story, but no actual evidence. We might expect the media to ignore news in favor of sensationalism these days, but some solid criticism never hurts.
Samples of Karr's DNA had been taken upon his arrival in Boulder on Thursday and they were tested at the Denver Police Department's crime lab over the weekend. Despite his insistence that he killed Ramsey -- and the 10-day media frenzy that has followed -- the tests have failed to put him at the scene of the crime and he may be released entirely by the end of the week.
What is amazing to me is the media circus that has followed this "case" for almost two weeks now without really a shred of proof that anything had truly developed in the 10-year-old mystery. And we're not just talking about an informational mention on page six or seven of the local newspaper, or a 90-second story buried in the second half of a one-hour newscast.
We're talking about hour upon hour of coverage, with some cable news networks devoting the entire hour of a 60-minute newscast to a developing story that could very well have turned out to be a lot of noise about nothing. We're talking about alleged journalists and editors whose judgment made them decide that John Mark Karr's plane ride from Thailand to the United States, where he sat, who he talked to, what he ate and even what procedure was used to allow him to use the bathroom was their very top story.
posted by Matt Sandwich | 7:08 AM
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