Off topic?
True they did and with a particular slant. The press knew what would sell and they sold and sold, mainly newspapers - for good money. Which suggests option 2 may be the correct answer to the poll question, depending on whether it's interpreted as referring to wider public attention or just attention here at JREF.
Curiously, I see no comment from you in this thread saying that Damon Thibodeaux kept changing his story. Along similar lines Larry Swearingen wrote a letter to the authorities in Spanish to convince the authorities that he was not involved in a murder, and he tried to get others to give him an alibi. He once stole a car, and he may have had a sexual interest in the victim despite being married. Yet I have never heard anyone call him a man of low morals or call his behavior trashy.
You wrote, “You keep changing your mind like Amanda changes her story." Similarly to Damon Thibodeaux, Amanda changed her story under pressure and changed it back within thirty-six hours. “Keep changing” is a phrase which suggests more than two and suggests behavior that is on-going IMO. Your characterization is a misleading and feckless description that falls short of being strictly false.
I think calling someone a ***** goes a bit beyond "remotely negative." I have gotten to know members of Ms. Knox's family and also Mr. Sollecito's family. Based on my first-hand experience, Ms. Knox is intelligent and empathetic, qualities to be admired and emulated, respectively. Given some of the contents of this thread, is it that surprising that Charlie or I would come to the defense of her and her family? MOO.
My objective point of view is that most if not all the key people connected to this case have been slandered or slurred over the years, I really see not point in getting into a contest as to who said what first, it smacks of 6 year olds arguing who started it first.
A slight exaggeration, don't you think? If you call her a whore you might be asked to explain why you think that.
Newsweek's coverage (via Barbie Nadeau) doesn't fit with your "sympathetic" characterization, but much of it bears reading. In a 2008 article entitled "Trial of the Century" Ms. Nadeau wrote, "Because the 21-year-old, blue-eyed Seattle native remains a national obsession in Italy, 14 months since Meredith Kercher, a British student in the Erasmus exchange program, was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered in a small rented villa in Perugia." I don't believe that most murder trials in Italy received anywhere near this level of attention from its national press corps.
I agree that the desire to sell the largest quantity of newspapers or magazines explains much of the poor-quality coverage. I don't agree that the American media was largely sympathetic. The British press, not just the tabloids, were at least as bad at fact-checking as the American press. Some of the most thorough reporting came from Perugia-Shock, which was a blog.
I am not sure I have a point really. The media coverage is not something I know much about. Let's agree there has been a mix of opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. It still leaves the question raised by the OP.
Sadly, people are murdered all the time, why do you believe some go largely ignored (by the media) whilst others seem to turn into a media tsunami.