Category: 20 No-PR hoax

Friday, February 20, 2009

Daily Mail’s Jan Moir Wants Due Process Respected By Parents

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for influential Jan Moir’s full column.

It is mainly about UK cases of parents not respecting the process, but the Knox campaign also gets a mention.

When Amanda Knox was arrested in Italy in connection with the murder of Meredith Kercher, her family began an incantation of her innocence and a blaring defence of her character that continues to this day

The defense PR campaign here seems to be unique in recent United States legal history. Also TV networks paying out very big bucks for exclusives with defendants’ relatives, as was just reported about ABC, seems something of a first here.

Typically the situation is that it is the victim and their relatives who get all the attention. Often on steroids. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Jan Moir is surprised.

The name of the victim here is Meredith, of course.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Trial: A Heavyweight American News-Site Reports Well On The Case

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for the report in Tina Brown’s new Daily Beast

The Beast is an innovative and very-fast-growing New-York based site (like our own!) which launched about the same time we did (no connection).

We see this piece is by the same Rome-based American reporter who filed the Newsweek report below. There are only three or four American reporters close to this case, so it seems they’re in real demand now.

Less than we would have liked on Meredith. Almost no mention. But there are points here of special interest:

1) Knox seems to be enjoying the assigned role

Sollecito comes in shortly after, but most people remain fixated on Knox, who does not look at all like the girl in TV footage taken the day after the crime, cuddling with Sollecito. She is older, thinner, and much prettier, and she has an aura about her. She looks comfortable in the courtroom, almost as if she is playing a role rather than facing charges of cutting Meredith’s throat while Sollecito held back her arms and Guede sexually assaulted her.

2) Sollecito has a new journalism career

Sollecito, who comes from a wealthy and connected family in Puglia, in the south of Italy, has been recruited to write a regular column from prison for his hometown paper in Bari. In it he recently claimed that he was a 23-year-old virgin when he met Knox. Interest in Sollecito has not been as ardent as that lavished on the pretty American coed, but it is growing.

3) The aggressive PR campaign is discouraging digging

An aggressive PR machine out of Seattle that runs under the moniker “Friends of Amanda” speaks out quickly and authoritatively in Knox’s defense, effectively discouraging US media from digging deeper into this mysterious crime. Family spokesman David Marriott arranges regular TV appearances for Knox’s parents and confirmed in an email that ABC’s 20/20 “paid for [Amanda’s mother] Edda to travel to Perugia and back. As a result, the family feels obligated to speak with ABC first.”

We hear other rumors of American networks paying big bucks for the attention of the biological parents. No-one, of course, is paying the Kerchers anything at all - they apparently insist on paying all their own bills.

4) TJMK and Perugia Murder File get highlighted

Meanwhile, the case has taken on a bizarre life of its own in the blogosphere, where a number of partisan websites, in both English and Italian, wage fierce battle. Among the most notable are the New York-based True Justice for Meredith Kercher and the Perugia Murder File, which both believe that Knox is guilty and defend the court proceedings in Perugia, translating critical court documents and creating impressive Powerpoint presentations to help readers decipher the evidence.

Hmmm. Vey nice, but a correction, if we may, Beast?  These sites don’t ever claim guilt. They point to very hard evidence to address, and a very fair process under way. And to the once-fading-fast notion that justice for Meredith, the only real victim here, really matters.

The impressive Powerpoints created for us by Kermit and Nicki (with more to come) are all here. And why the defendants were sent to trial can be read here.

5) The fratricide on some amateur websites now in meltdown

The blogs in defense of Knox include Italian Woman at the Table, which is run by a Seattle-based reporter writing a book on the case, and Perugia Shock. Comment sections in the blogs are rife with threats and accusations””not against Knox and Sollecito, mind you, but against other bloggers. Some have taken to exposing the actual names and addresses of people posting under screen names or threatening physical harm to those with opposing views of the case.

6) And how the case coverage is tracked in Perugia

The blogs are taken very seriously in Perugia, where prosecutors have assigned someone to follow the postings.

So how is it going there, guys? Getting paid to read us? That must be a first…