This is a brilliant article and it needs to be read by all those posting here.
http://elitedaily.com/news/world/the-media-and-the-amanda-knox-case/764282/
Selene Nelson’s essay is based on false premises and distortions about the evidence and the facts of the case. She uses subjective sources (e.g., Barbie Nadeau) and commentary long after the fact (e.g., Seattle Business Journal) to bolster her claim that Gogerty Marriott built an image of Amanda Knox in the American mass media. She says that the news coming into the US from Perugia was
“meticulously sieved free of any negativity.” Nelson cannot support these claims, though. She was not paying attention during the first few years of the case.
Until the decision at the end of the first trial in December 2009, the case received very little coverage at all in the United States mass media, and when it was covered, the written reports were primarily reprints of articles by British journalists based on information they got from Italian journalists. The subject matter was mainly about the charges against the defendants and the progress of the legal process. Ironically, the only American journalists Nadeau cites in the article upon which much of Nelson’s essay is based are Nadeau herself and Andrea Vogt, neither of whom can be credited with writing many positive things about Amanda in the American media. Where, then, are Nelson’s cited examples of how Marriott got
“Americans on board with the case?”
If any newspaper had reason to cover the case, it would have been the Seattle Times, the leading newspaper in Amanda’s hometown (the case received virtually no coverage at all in the first two years in larger papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post). Yet, until the end of the first trial in December 2009, coverage of the case in the Seattle Times was less than half what it would be following the first and second trials. Only then did the case first come, arguably, to mainstream attention. This JREF thread, for example, was not started until Knox had already been in prison for two+ years and was convicted of the crimes (media coverage of criminal convictions can hardly be called "free of negativity").
Seattle Times articles or items mentioning the name Amanda Knox:
November 2, 2007 – November 1, 2008 - 67
November 2, 2008 – November 1, 2009 - 74
November 2, 2009 – November 1, 2010 - 137
November 2, 2010 – November 1, 2011 – 272 (105, or 37%, of which appeared between October 2, 2011 [date of acquittal] and November 1, 2011)
November 2, 2011 – November 1, 2012 - 53
November 2, 2012 – November 1, 2013 - 91
November 2, 2013 – September 24, 2014 – 48
Nelson needs more than other people’s years-old claims, opinions and hearsay about how the American mass media manipulated Knox’s image. She needs to provide a substantial number of examples from the American mass media (not internet forums) of unbalanced reports biased in Knox’s favor. She will not succeed.
Nelson’s analysis of the situation surrounding Rudy Guede fails as well. She writes,
“All the more important it is, then, to highlight the way the relaying of information and evidence is controlled, distorted, manipulated and even omitted for the gain of the suspects and not the victim.” If this is the theme of her essay, then she needs to take her own, earlier, advice and
“apply the same logic to all three defendants.”
Nelson describes one of the mass media’s
“set of ludicrous, prescribed guidelines” working against Guede as (7.)
“Conduct countless interviews with the friends and families of the two white people. Ensure you never speak with the friends or relatives of the black man.” Earlier in her essay, she quotes Guede himself as having written,
“I had a beautiful family and precious squeaky clean and friendly relations in Perugia.”
Does Nelson truly believe journalists would turn up their noses at chances to interview Guede’s family and friends? She should instead be wondering where Guede’s beautiful family has been, and why none of his squeaky clean relations came forward to defend him in the press the way Knox’s did, if only for personal gain. After all, according the cited article by Barbie Nadeau,
“[allegedly].....all sorts of people tried to make a buck off the murder. Amanda’s classmates in both Perugia and Seattle asked for cash or plane tickets in exchange for interviews. One of her teachers in Italy offered a TV producer Amanda’s handwritten letter—for 10,000 euros. Tidbits from the legal dossier were shopped around.” Is it possible there were no rewards to be found, for informants or journalists, by getting in on the same types of scoops about the actual murderer?
Nelson, in her shallow understanding of the mechanics of the case, probably does not know that the beautiful family about which Guede wrote is also the wealthiest family in Perugia, who are also without any doubt personally-connected friends of the local magistrates and perhaps even of the organized crime bosses who provide the product and the pushers for Umbria’s massive illegal (mostly unprosecuted) drug trade. She may not even know how most residents of Perugia were and are loath to comment on any move the police, prosecutors or judges made when it came to this case, solely out of fear of reprisals.
Maybe Nelson thinks Perugia is such a backwater compared to the US that it would not occur to the media there to distort, manipulate and even omit information for their readers. Ha.
Study the case, Selene, and come back later.
- is this Selene lady one of those crazy women that fall in love with rapist/murderers?
