Continuation Part 20: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Annella]

Yes, I thought it was Profazio too. And I thought it was one of those things that was being bandied around "off the record" as such, by the beaming cops who were basking in the glory of having "solv-ed ze crime" (c. Inspector Clouseau) in front of the world's media at that triumphalist press conference.

I don't think that this phrase was necessarily said in front of a microphone as part of the official press conference. Rather, as I say, I think it was being said around the room by Profazio (and maybe other officers) who were pumped full of pride, hubris, excitement and extreme self-importance. Probably someone who was present at the press conference would know for sure.

You are likely correct. This article from November 6th 2007 doesn't mention Profazio at all and uses other words for caso chiuso. I am assuming though that Castellini was at that press conference and heard the words.

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/Sole...00000e251029&DocRulesView=Libero&refresh_ce=1

 

[LondonJohn]

The question is did anyone use the exact words "caso chiusa". Many reported De Felice said the case was solved by his stellar crew blah, blah, blah

Probably not. Because the exact words are "caso chiuso".

And as I said before, I strongly remember the contemporaneous reports of the press conference of 6th November stating that these words ("caso chiuso") were not spoken within the formal body of the conference itself, but by one or more beaming police officers as they metaphorically (and perhaps literally) high-fived themselves in front of the assembled world's media. And I recall that the reports stated that the ringleader of this was Profazio.

But I have neither the time nor the inclination to do an in-depth search for those reports. Others are welcome to try if they think it's sufficiently important

 

[LondonJohn]

Capezzali's timeframe is only an estimate of what time she got up to go to the loo.

1) She gave 11pm as pretty much the earliest time that she could have got up.

2) I wonder if the footage showed two or more people running up those stairs at any time later than, say, 10.00? I suspect not.

3) Regardless of (1) or (2), the PM used Capezzali's account to support a time of death of 11.30-11.40pm, so the police/PM clearly had to have believed that Capezzali heard what she alleges she heard at around that time. And the Massei court agreed. The CCTV footage would have comprehensively demolished any chance of Capezzali's account supporting the police's (and convicting court's) timelines, and would have cast serious doubt over the credibility and reliability of Capezzali's testimony as a whole (especially if the CCTV showed nobody running up those stairs between say 10pm and midnight, as I strongly suspect is the case).

 

[Vixen]

Apparently not any more. If Barbie Nadeau has stuck a finger in the air to see the direction of the prevailing wind, you can be assured that the, "For now, for now" camp is very small. That camp probably consults Machiavelli for legal advice because even Maresca has moved on.... acc. to Andrea Vogt.

Who's left?

You don't need a weatherman to say which way the wind is blowing (Bob Dylan).

Vogt and Nadeau are journalists, not cult leaders. Vogt has been in the realms of excellence IMV. It was regrettable her public "strop", but there are personal reasons behind it all. AIUI the police once turned over Barbie's apartment, which should inform you of Vogt's own trepidations and her meltdown.

 

[Vixen]

The question is did anyone use the exact words "caso chiusa". Many reported De Felice said the case was solved by his stellar crew blah, blah, blah

Sounds like a bombastic Gobbio (sp?) epiphet.

 

[Grinder]

Probably not. Because the exact words are "caso chiuso".

Oh I thought they were talking about Amanda - a female case closed.

 

[Bill Williams]

You don't need a weatherman to say which way the wind is blowing (Bob Dylan).

Vogt and Nadeau are journalists, not cult leaders. Vogt has been in the realms of excellence IMV. It was regrettable her public "strop", but there are personal reasons behind it all. AIUI the police once turned over Barbie's apartment, which should inform you of Vogt's own trepidations and her meltdown.

Not cult leaders? Where did that come from? You mean Barbie has been coerced to switch sides? The police would never coerce anyone, would they?

 

[LondonJohn]

You don't need a weatherman to say which way the wind is blowing (Bob Dylan).

Vogt and Nadeau are journalists, not cult leaders. Vogt has been in the realms of excellence IMV. It was regrettable her public "strop", but there are personal reasons behind it all. AIUI the police once turned over Barbie's apartment, which should inform you of Vogt's own trepidations and her meltdown.

Nope. Any reporter who a) gets too close to one of the "sides" in any given case* (in this instance the prosecutor and the victim's family lawyer) and/or b) identifies with, quotes from and liases with a partisan source of information on the case (in this instance the PMF websites and the fake wiki) can never be described as being "in the realms of excellence".

I would concur that some of Vogt's straight-up reportage of the trials and other judicial matters was good and informative. But whenever she added an editorial angle, she was simply dreadful IMO. And, just as with virtually every other printed media reporter who covered this case, she was also clearly and undoubtedly tainted by the desire to create sensationalist, juicy, volatile copy, in order to try to sell it to any publisher who would actually pay.


* In the same way, I would totally agree that some reporters who got too close to Knox and her family also gave up their right to be perceived as excellent reporters on the case itself (though some of them did very good work covering the human story of Knox and her family).

 

[LondonJohn]

Sounds like a bombastic Gobbio (sp?) epiphet.

Giobbi. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to look these names up, you know. And "epithet".

 

[Grinder]

Nope. Any reporter who a) gets too close to one of the "sides" in any given case* (in this instance the prosecutor and the victim's family lawyer) and/or b) identifies with, quotes from and liases with a partisan source of information on the case (in this instance the PMF websites and the fake wiki) can never be described as being "in the realms of excellence".

I would concur that some of Vogt's straight-up reportage of the trials and other judicial matters was good and informative. But whenever she added an editorial angle, she was simply dreadful IMO. And, just as with virtually every other printed media reporter who covered this case, she was also clearly and undoubtedly tainted by the desire to create sensationalist, juicy, volatile copy, in order to try to sell it to any publisher who would actually pay.


* In the same way, I would totally agree that some reporters who got too close to Knox and her family also gave up their right to be perceived as excellent reporters on the case itself (though some of them did very good work covering the human story of Knox and her family).

Does that mean the police took their finger prints?

Also confused were you referring to
plural noun: liases
the earliest epoch of the Jurassic period, lasting from about 208 to 178 million years ago.

ETA - Caso Chiusa

or perhaps you meant li·aise (lē-āz′)
intr.v. li·aised, li·ais·ing, li·ais·es
1. To effect or establish a liaison.
2. To act or serve as a liaison officer.

 

[Bill Williams]

* In the same way, I would totally agree that some reporters who got too close to Knox and her family also gave up their right to be perceived as excellent reporters on the case itself (though some of them did very good work covering the human story of Knox and her family).

The problem I have with this definition is that it would include the likes of Tim Egan, from the New York Times.

I think a better distinction is not which "side" a reporter took, it is that at some point nearly all the journalists gave up journalism and became, in effect, editorialists - which is a slightly different profession. An editorialist lays on the table the reasons why they have endorsed one "side" over another.

It's not then a matter of giving up being an "excellent" reporter, your word ("excellent") it's a matter of being transparent as to what the writer wishes to accomplish.

 

[LondonJohn]

Does that mean the police took their finger prints?

Also confused were you referring to
plural noun: liases
the earliest epoch of the Jurassic period, lasting from about 208 to 178 million years ago.

ETA - Caso Chiusa

or perhaps you meant li·aise (lē-āz′)
intr.v. li·aised, li·ais·ing, li·ais·es
1. To effect or establish a liaison.
2. To act or serve as a liaison officer.

Hmmm. I think that one missed "i" and one missed hyphen in a long post among many other long posts count as genuine typos. But nice of you to point them out nonetheless. Well done.

(ETA: there was a useful reason why I corrected your misspelling of the Italian phrase "caso chiuso": I figured that some might be searching for it. You might even have been searching for it yourself. And if you were searching for "caso chiusa" you wouldn't have got any decent search results. Same with "Giobbi")

 

[LondonJohn]

The problem I have with this definition is that it would include the likes of Tim Egan, from the New York Times.

I think a better distinction is not which "side" a reporter took, it is that at some point nearly all the journalists gave up journalism and became, in effect, editorialists - which is a slightly different profession. An editorialist lays on the table the reasons why they have endorsed one "side" over another.

It's not then a matter of giving up being an "excellent" reporter, your word ("excellent") it's a matter of being transparent as to what the writer wishes to accomplish.

I would say that taking an editorial position on a case (whether or not that means taking a firm view on guilt/non-guilt/innocence) is entirely different from forming an emotional attachment with one "interested party" or another. I was strictly talking about the latter situation.

 

[Bill Williams]

I would say that taking an editorial position on a case (whether or not that means taking a firm view on guilt/non-guilt/innocence) is entirely different from forming an emotional attachment with one "interested party" or another. I was strictly talking about the latter situation.

How do you measure an "emotional attachment"? There's also the issue of this - if during the course of one's completely objective, stone-cold sober journalism one comes to the conclusion that the accused has been railroaded....

..... why is it bad to have an "emotional attachment" to that? That sort of attachment is when the hairs of anger stand up on the back of one's neck.....

Surely you're just dancing around saying that someone has been somehow compromised - not even compromised in objectivity, because in some cases it is the objective pursuit that leads one there. And it does not necessarily mean they have been compromised.

 

[LondonJohn]

How do you measure an "emotional attachment"? There's also the issue of this - if during the course of one's completely objective, stone-cold sober journalism one comes to the conclusion that the accused has been railroaded....

..... why is it bad to have an "emotional attachment" to that? That sort of attachment is when the hairs of anger stand up on the back of one's neck.....

Surely you're just dancing around saying that someone has been somehow compromised - not even compromised in objectivity, because in some cases it is the object pursuit that leads one there.

Noooo. I'm not talking about an emotional reaction to the case. I am talking about forming an actual interpersonal relationship and bond with e.g. Amanda Knox, or her family, or Mignini, or the Kercher family, etc.........

 

[Bill Williams]

LondonJohn:

The reason why I raise Tim Egan of the NYTimes in the theme you are developing is because of one of the pieces he wrote.

He'd gone to Perugia himself assuming that there was some manner of independent journalism going on in town. He was stunned to find, and wrote about it, that the folks there were piece-work stringers whose pay-cheque depended on some level of titillation in their story.

Egan, in a sense, lost his "objectivity" by reporting that there was no true-investigative reporting coming out of the town, particularly into the UK press. He described the dynamic quite well.

 

[Grinder]

Hmmm. I think that one missed "i" and one missed hyphen in a long post among many other long posts count as genuine typos. But nice of you to point them out nonetheless. Well done.

(ETA: there was a useful reason why I corrected your misspelling of the Italian phrase "caso chiuso": I figured that some might be searching for it. You might even have been searching for it yourself. And if you were searching for "caso chiusa" you wouldn't have got any decent search results. Same with "Giobbi")

Actually I thought of that and appreciated it but couldn't resist

How would the hyphen have helped

 

[Bill Williams]

Noooo. I'm not talking about an emotional reaction to the case. I am talking about forming an actual interpersonal relationship and bond with e.g. Amanda Knox, or her family, or Mignini, or the Kercher family, etc.........

Then the journalism around this was compromised from almost the start, if this is your definition. Even Barbie Nadeau wrote at one point that access to "the family" on one side, or access to "the prosecution" on the other was meted out depending on what each of those "camps" thought about you as a journalist.

Candace Dempsey's main source for her book is almost exclusively Frank Sfarzo and those around the Knox family, and John Follain's main source for his book is almost solely his privileged access to the prosecution, and the tapes/transcripts of Knox's conversations the prosecution provided him with.

It seems a stretch to say that all of that dynamic created an "emotional attachment", unless I am misunderstanding that you are not saying that necessarily means hopelessly compromised.

 

[Grinder]

LondonJohn:

The reason why I raise Tim Egan of the NYTimes in the theme you are developing is because of one of the pieces he wrote.

He'd gone to Perugia himself assuming that there was some manner of independent journalism going on in town. He was stunned to find, and wrote about it, that the folks there were piece-work stringers whose pay-cheque depended on some level of titillation in their story.

Egan, in a sense, lost his "objectivity" by reporting that there was no true-investigative reporting coming out of the town, particularly into the UK press. He described the dynamic quite well.

Just curious if you know Egan's background? How do you know what his frame of mind was?

There is non doubt that CD was not objective from very, very early on. The problem is that reporters can make an error in judgment, become vested and no longer can see the emperor has no clothes.

 

[Grinder]

Then the journalism around this was compromised from almost the start, if this is your definition. Even Barbie Nadeau wrote at one point that access to "the family" on one side, or access to "the prosecution" on the other was meted out depending on what each of those "camps" thought about you as a journalist.

Candace Dempsey's main source for her book is almost exclusively Frank Sfarzo and those around the Knox family, and John Follain's main source for his book is almost solely his privileged access to the prosecution, and the tapes/transcripts of Knox's conversations the prosecution provided him with.

It seems a stretch to say that all of that dynamic created an "emotional attachment", unless I am misunderstanding that you are not saying that necessarily means hopelessly compromised.

Bill I remember Barbie's issues with the family but don't recall her saying anything about the prosecution. Could you provide her making the statements you claim?

Follain's angle were the british girls and the Kerchers as well as the PLE.