Murder, Media and Mysteries

[Stavros]

In the US the Casey Anthony trial, in the UK a 'phone hacking scandal' -in both cases an issue of 'responsible reporting' as well as the methods journalists use to get a story.

There are some profound issues here, and the not-so-profound claim by the journalists that it is what the public want to read, and if they didn't they would not buy the paper, or watch that report on tv, or queue up for hours to get into the courtroom.

There seems to be a standard practice after a murder where the media reports as much as it can, but where people either forget that what is being reported is an allegation or even an assumption and not fact, or that the dubious quality of the information is not emphasised enough -should assumptions even be news?

Typically, the character of the people involved will be 'news' -a young woman is murdered in Bristol, her landlord, who knew her boyfriend was away for the weekend, taught at the prestigious Clifton school -when he was teaching there he had a shock of hair that he had dyed blue (it has since gone grey). Apparently a weird eccntric (and therefore, surely a callous murderer?) and a gift for the tabloids -he was arrested, let go, and is suing the papers.

We have all been here before, its been going on for years. But technology is now blurring the boundaries, although in the UK it is still illegal to hack into someone's mobile phone. Rupert Murdoch's main Sunday Tabloid, the News of the World has been publishing 'sensational' stories since the 1960s if not before, it's famous for it. It appears their journalists -many of whom work on a freelance basis and have to get a story to get paid- hired private detectives to trace phone numbers so they could hack into the phones of murder victims and their families -and also the investigating police (!) -in one case the journalist even deleted messages on the phone of an abducted teenager which caused the family to think she was still alive even though she was lying dead in a ditch.

There has to be some limit to this -or is there? Are the public so determined to know if celebrity X is having sex with Celebrity Y they will tolerate this method? Does it even result in good journalism?

Are politicians and footballers and movie stars 'fair game' but not the public?

Is this about moral standards in journalism, or an as yet unresolved problem of applying the law in an age when communications technology has gone beyond what the law can control?

There are always missing facts in murder enquiries -we may never know exactly what happened when Meredith Kercher was murdered in Perugia, and it is these gaps the media tries to fill. Should we just accept that the 'whole truth, and nothing but the truth' is an elusive goal?

[robertlouis]

Once I saw your post on the other thread I deleted my post and added it here. It takes a different line to that of Stavros but I hope it will add to the overall debate. These are important issues.


In light of the current furore in the UK about the News of the World's illegal hacking into Milly Dowler's mobile*, it appears that we're not alone in having out of control tabloid journalism. Difference is that in the US they are already able to push things well beyond the bounds of taste. Of course, that could be just a matter of time while yet another UK government lies down and gets royally screwed by Murdoch's despicable organisation.

Could the Dowler case be the watershed which finally sees this evil man and his corporation get their comeuppance? I'm not holding my breath.

* For US readers, Milly Dowler was a 13-year old schoolgirl who was kidnapped and murdered 8 years ago. The perpetrator was recently jailed for life - he was already serving life for, I think, two other murders, so the local police force has serious questions to answer.

What has subsequently come to light is that a combination of journalists and contracted private investigators hacked into the girl's mobile voicemail while she was missing and then went on to delete some of those mails, thereby possibly destroying evidence.

The NoW is the UK's biggest selling paper, and there is now of course the usual rush of the righteous amongst their readership to distance themselves from their customary prurience and claim that they will boycott the paper. Again I won't hold my breath.

However, two important things - advertisers are starting to walk away, and the Metropolitan Police, who appear to have been in Murdoch's pocket in all previous investigations into phone hacking now finally appear to have no choice but to pursue the matter to its conclusion.

Add in the fact that the government is also currently considering a bid by Murdoch's TV company, Sky, to take over all of its parent, BskyB, and you have a most unsavoury mix.

Kelly, sorry for what looks like a pre-emptive strike on your thread, but the parallels between the Casey Anthony case and what's currently going on here were just too obvious for me not to comment.

[trish]

It seems everybody has an opinion on the Casey Anthony trial. I haven't followed it at all, so I have no opinion on guilt or innocence. I do have an opinion on the wide spread coverage of such trails and events. It's tawdry. Not the trial__the coverage. For the system of trial by a jury of peers to work, several key elements need to be kept in place.
1) The jury shouldn't feel like it's under media pressure to find a particular way. If, for example, the media portrays the nation as if everyone is clamoring for a guilty verdict and if the jury becomes aware of that coverage, it like putting a giant thumb on the scales of justice.
2) The jury shouldn't feel like they can earn big bucks by selling their story. If the media coverage is constant and loud there will be jury members thinking more about how their behavior will be portrayed in the upcoming books than about the details and logic of the case at hand.
3) The defendant, if found innocent, shouldn't be sentenced outside the courtroom. You can disagree with the verdict, but (imo) we have a covenant with the law to abide by the findings of the courts. In a democracy we do not lynch defendants in the streets when they are found innocent contrary to our own beliefs about their guilt or innocence__yet over excessive media coverage does exactly that; i.e. it sentences and exacts its own punishment outside the court of law, and it does this for profit.

[Stavros]

Trish I agree with most of what you say, but there is an issue here of how to hermetically seal a jury from the diverse range of information they can access by a mobile phone or laptop. It probably relates more to high profile cases where I guess the jury will already have heard about the murder on the news -if it is a little girl as it was in the Casey Anthony case- this immediately causes some emotional reaction.

Yes, the jury must then decide -but only on the evidence presented in court, but can we be sure jurors never access the web? I have been told jurors go home and do just that and it sways their opinion. The days of 12 Angry Men have gone, but the jury there was locked into a room at the end of the trial to reach their verdict -during the trial presumably they could have taken a walk past the house where the crime happened, etc.

One of the most famous murder cases in British history involved a man, James Hanratty, who was found guilty of murdering a man and shooting his girlfriend in a layby on a motorway -he was the last man hanged in the UK. There was a campaign -still is, I think- to prove him innocent and issue a posthumous pardon -but he told a policeman he did it, only that was not admissable in court. We have cases like the Birmingham Six who were found guilty of putting a bomb in a Birmingham pub -they were innocent but found guilty on evidence presented in court -evidence that would have let them go was not presented. Crimes are not open and shut like they are on tv, there are gaps, there are lies, there are strategies by lawyers and so on. Truth is a rare commodity -so how can any juror accessing 'evidence' on twitter, facebook, or google know it is real or just something someone made up?

We have a different scandal unfolding in the UK, Murdoch I think will get away with it unless the share price of News International takes a dive (they lost 2.5% on early day trading). He can shut down the News of the World, the paper at the centre of the storm, but it doesn't deal with this issue of the technology that everyone -secret services, police, military, journalist -and criminals can use. Regulation is emerging as the tool, but is that the answer? Is the answer to drug wars in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala for Americans and British and French and German people to stop shoving white powder up their nose? Is the solution to sick journalism for people to stop reading it, to stop buying the papers that print it?

[trish]

I think we are becoming The Borg. Once we are all assimilated the hive mind will decide all legal cases. But then there won't be any crime, because all actions taken will be the will of the hive.

[hippifried]

I just want Nancy Grace fired.

[Prospero]

I suspect it can only be a matter of time before a very senior executive in Murdoch's UK newspaper operation is forced to fall on her sword but her utterly ruthless chief. Loyalty is god providing it doesn't have a serious impact on his business ambitions. The bid for ownership of the entire SkyTV franchise - which will cnfirm him the single most powerful media figure in the UK. (And it will lea to the one decent part of his empire being thrust from the mothership and forced to survive on its own... that's Sky News.) (Sky is a very different animal from Fox by the way for American readers).

I see Murdoch surviving all of this but perhaps not Rebekka Wade.

[hippifried]

Murdoch announced the official demise of "News of the World" a few hours ago. All the advertizers were bailing out anyway. Kinda makes you want to shut off your mobil phone. This crap is really gettin' out of hand, & it's not better because it isn't the government.