Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Good Balanced Debate On A Controversial Case, No Too-Frequent Victim Stance For Accused
Posted by The Machine
Above, the trailer for the crime debate program discussed here
I have previously written a post about the Adnan Syed/Hae Min Lee case and Sarah Koenig’s biased and one-sided Serial podcasts.
She presented the case primarily from the defence’s perspecitve. She didn’t interview the prosecutor or any of the police officers involved in this case, but instead relied heavily on Adnan Syed as well as relying on his chief advocate in the media Rabia Chaudry and Asia McClain, who claims she is an alibi witness.
To be fair to Sarah Koenig she also interviewed Jay Wilds who was the key witness for the prosecution. However, her bias towards Adnan Syed is clearly evident in the number of people she spoke to who think he is innocent compared to those who think he is guilty.
In the post, I also expressed the hope that the mainstream media would provide balanced and factually accurate reports on the case - which is something they didn’t do when covering the Meredith Kercher case.
Predictably, most of the media coverage of the case hasn’t been balanced. The narrative of an innocent person being convicted of a crime they didn’t commit is more sensational and melodramatic than that of someone being rightfully convicted and American public relations takes advantage of this to the hilt. .
Rabia Chaudry has written a number of advocacy pieces in the media for The Guardian and Time (both of which were also riddled with Knox PR shills) in which she presents the defence’s claims as if they are established facts.
She brushes any inconvenient facts under the carpet. For example that an FBI expert claims the mobile phone evidence that places Adnan Syed in Leakin Park on the day Hae Min Lee disappeared is reliable.
Rabia Chaudry is also one of the contributors to the Undisclosed podcasts which are even more biased and one-sided than Serial - which is no mean feat. Adnan Syed’s supporters unquestiongly believe whatever Rabia Chaudry, Susan Simpson or Colin Miller tell them.
Incidentally, Susan Simpson believes Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent and the DNA evidece was “staged”. She also resorts to ridiculous conspiracy theories in the Adnan Syed/Hae Min Lee case by claiming the police coached Jay Wilds by tapping.
So it was refreshing to see no-nonsense former prosecutor Nancy Grace discussing the Adnan Syed/Hae Mine Lee case with legal commentator Dan Abrams on the new series GRACE v ABRAMS in a programme that allowed both sides to present their opinions and let the audience make up their own minds.
Sarah Koenig, The Guardian and Time please take note. It should go without saying there are two sides to every story and your job to inform the public about the facts of murder cases - not persuade people that convicted killers are innocent.
Posted by The Machine on 05/02/18 at 02:56 AM in The legal followups, News media & movies, Excellent reporting, Media developments
Comments
You can watch the whole programme here:
https://ok.ru/video/1139271010951
Hae Min Lee’s best friend Debbie puts forward a compelling scenario and explains why she doesn’t believe Asia McClain. It’s a shame that the likes of Debbie and the judge who presided over the original trial haven’t been heard in the media until now.
Posted by The Machine on 05/02/18 at 03:46 PM | #
Interesting article. Here is something more depressing. It’s here:
https://news.google.com/news/story/dWsE4zCBGlTTX_MwmVV23ulkqJ-OM?hl=en-GB&ned=uk&gl=GB
Posted by Chimera on 05/03/18 at 02:06 PM | #
Hi Chimera, The link doesn’t work.
Posted by The Machine on 05/03/18 at 02:34 PM | #
basically, coverage about her ViCE show and demonizing. Sickening how they drool over Knox.
Posted by Chimera on 05/03/18 at 02:52 PM | #
It must be incredibly trying for families of the victim to have to endure such podcasters.
I watched her latest interview. Not even a mention of Meredith, let alone what happened to her.
I wonder in which episode of her new series she will talk about Meredith, if at all.
If she does, I’m sure it will be through gritted teeth.
Truly beggars belief she is still on TV.
Sickening.
Posted by DavidB on 05/03/18 at 03:11 PM | #
It does not help that for eons now Wikipedia has had the nonsense below on its Meredith Kercher website.
On 27 March 2015, Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of murder, thereby definitively ending the case. Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was insufficient evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito had not committed the murder and were innocent of those charges, but it upheld Knox’s conviction for slandering Patrick Lumumba.”
“In September 2015, the delegate Supreme Judge, Court adviser Mr. Gennaro Marasca, made public the reasons of absolution. First, none of the evidence demonstrated that either Knox or Sollecito was present at the crime scene. Second, they cannot have “materially participated in the homicide”, since there were absolutely no “biological traces that could be attributed to them in the room of the murder or on the body of the victim, where in contrast numerous traces were found attributable to Guede”“
The Facts
1. Cassation declared that there was insufficient evidence to convict, and that was the reason for the acquittal, not that it had been established that neither had committed the murder i.e Section 2, rather than section 1, of Article 530 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure.
2. Technically Cassation could not uphold nor cast doubt on Knox’s calunnia conviction because that had already been made definitive by virtue of an earlier Cassation ruling dismissing Knox’s final appeal on the matter.
3. Cassation upheld as judicial fact that Knox was in the cottage at the time of the murder.
You have to hand it to the groupies. They bombarded Wikepedia with their falsehoods so aggressively and for so long that this fake news is enshrined on the website.
Posted by James Raper on 05/03/18 at 06:35 PM | #
Hi James Raper
Good on how some of the US population is still misled though I’d say that’s already a dwindled trend. Take a look around. See how few of Knox’s former high-profile apologists are still waving the flag? points like yours will sway more.
On Wikipedia, several posters on our sites fought to get the pages straight, a few years back. It is very time consuming. Like watching paint dry.
However, as a direct result our own Wiki was created, and it has turned into a gigantic and very threatening sleeper of a site. It is many many times larger than the Wikipedia entries and even now development continues at a fast and furious pace.
The number of documents and translations both doubled in the past 18 months alone. All this additional material goes to making more concrete the case you have well described. No surprises (at least for us) there.
By the way the Italian-language Wikipedia page was always good.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/03/18 at 09:59 PM | #
Really pleased at the VICE development.
We could have simply written and alerted VICE. And then? Then they would very quietly have moved on to another bright shiny object. Both they and Knox would quietly be home-free.
But we need and intend a happening that shakes the media from wall to wall. And here we almost certainly have it. A hungry new media group, chained to Knox in an open ended series, under false labeling!
It looks just perfect. Posts are a-coming.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/04/18 at 02:05 AM | #
Hi Chimera,
Amanda Knox is evil beyond words. She has never shown any flicker of remorse or regret. She is so brazen portraying herself as a victim and constantly putting herself in the public eye as if she’s someone important with something intelligent to say. It defies belief that she fools so many people.
Posted by The Machine on 05/05/18 at 05:04 PM | #
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