Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Did Tabloid Mentality Muddle Results From First Amanda Knox Trial

I read British press a lot.  In the controversy surrounding the trial of Amanda Knox I probably first read The Mirror or another" source, OK, tabloid on the subject. 
Long before the court made its decision the British tabloids had convicted her and her former boyfriend.  The American woman emerged from their pages as a blood thirsty devil.  That portrayal was most likely based on one created by the Italian prosecutor who was pushing, as late as Friday, the idea that Amanda was over-priviledged because (he alleged)  a US media company had an empty jet at the ready to whisk the young woman and her family home to Seattle.  The article in The Guardian report linked in an adjacent post  says the family will be taking a regularly scheduled flight so the prosecution assertion was apparently BS.  He was probably trying to make Ms Knox's kin seem privileged in comparison to Ms Kercher's family which couldn't get to Perugia for this second trial.  But, if a media company had offered a complete plane at the family's disposal it would probably have been News International, a business, which though incorporated in the US is very much in the Brit tabloid tradition, and it probably would have offered each member a free (hacked) cell phone to boot. 
Even though the Guardian is about the best in English News, the Brit attitude to get "that American girl" seeps in with the words from Ms Kercher's (the murdered young woman's) father and less understandably David Cameron. Both bemoan the freeing of Ms Knox. 
Cameron wailed that the father no longer had a story to go with his daughter's death.  Well no story is better than a bad story, Sir, and imprisoning a young American woman falsely is not worth the limp satisfaction it might bring. 
Mr Cameron, put down the rags (tabloids). Your nation needs you to lead them out of the morass you've guided them into with your politically conservative austerity measures, not to play your part in the Tabloid Games.