Monday, August 29, 2022
Alert! Serial Misrepresenter Of MK Case Now Misrepresenting Under New Name
Posted by Peter Quennell
1. Overview
Two heavily promoted and wildly inaccurate new reports have appeared.
In both, a whiny I’m-the-real-victim Sollecito reprises his recent Der Spiegel rant in German which we took apart here.
One is a two-part report on the new Paramount Plus video-streaming channel, and the other is a Kate Mansey story in the Online Daily Mail.
We’ll also be taking each of them apart next. First, some wider context here.
2. Wider Media Context
Netflix entered the internet-based video-streaming business first and has generally grown very fast. Today it is global, and still huge.
Back in 2016 Netflix took a huge stock hit, when a so-called real-crime report turned out to be in part fake.
On-line streamers have generally tried to be above board in their relatively few cautious true-crime productions since.
Paramount Global with all its subsidiaries, including Showtime and CBS, is worth in total only about 10 percent of what Netflix is worth. William Cohan in Puck News explained Paramount Global’s overall fit.
Paramount Global is a minnow among sharks. With a market value of around $23 billion [now down to $16 billion] it is the smallest of the group of companies that aspire to Hollywood hegemony. Netflix, even after its recent plunge, still has a market value of about $157 billion. Comcast [NBC] is valued at around $206 billion. Disney [ABC] has a market value of more than $250 billion. [Content provider Amazon is at $1.3 trillion, Apple at $2.54 trillion, and Alphabet/Google/YouTube at #1.42 trillion.]
In this distinctly precarious situation, where misrepresenting true crime could be a real mistake, minnow Paramount Global’s video-streaming service Paramount Plus was launched a year ago in the US.
Paramount Plus was also launched a few weeks ago in parts of Europe including the UK (but not Italy) with its flagship promotional vehicle… an anti-Italy Sollecito whine?!
3. Demonizing Italy Context
Paramount Global under its old names (first Viacom and CBS, and then Viacom/CBS) has long been the most misleading and dishonest of all of the exploiters of the case among the main media in the US.
It had no reporters in the Italian courts (in fact none to our knowledge anywhere in Italy) and it has done zero translations of key reports.
Nevertheless it has historically taken a large number of cracks at Italian justice with help from a group of Seattle money-grubbers and members of Knox’s PR. See this partial list of posts below.
Click for Post: Why CBS Should Report Better - Way Better - On This Case
Click for Post: CBS Attempts To Trash Another Witness, Lies To Its Audience
Click for Post: Rumors In Manhattan About Ludicrously Bad CBS Report
Click for Post: CBS Reporter’s Bizarre Claims About Prosecutor And Reporters
Click for Post: CBS Report Sets New Record For Trashing Of Meredith, Xenophobia, Multi-Inaccuracies, Possible Libels
Click for Post: Plight Of CBS Network: Anti Justice For Meredith Is Increasingly Bad Business
Click for Post: We Now Examine The Compelling Evidence For The REAL Railroading From Hell
Click for Post: Producer Of CBS Reports On The Case “Crazy, Desperate, Stupid, And/Or Unscrupulous” ?
Click for Post: CBS Producer of Most Biased Perugia-Case Reports Pleads Guilty To An Unrelated Crime
Click for Post: Emmy Nomination For CBS Producer For Xenophobic And Wildly Inaccurate Reports On Meredith’s Case?!
Click for Post: The Very Appropriate Casting Of CBS’s Doug Preston As The Fredo Corleone Wannabe
Click for Post: That Supposed Tsunami Of Leaks That Supposedly Hurt The Alleged Perps: Who REALLY Leaked?
Click for Post: CBS’s Paul Ciolino Hit With A $40 Million Suit For Real Railroad Job From Hell
4. Context Of Daily Mail
The Daily Mail has had no fixed positions on the case, and mainly dabbles in it sensationally now and then, often to the discomfort of Knox.
Kate Mansey is a main editor of the paper, and her crackpot report mainly summarizes and promotes the streaming Paramount Plus report which mainly has Sollecito whining in misleading terms yet again.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/29/22 at 01:35 PM in
Comments
Money grubbing has always explained a lot in the warped coverage of the MK case.
The original broadcast TV channels in the US were CBS (see above), NBC, and ABC. In the 1990s Fox came along too.
The arrival of cable and the internet resulted in none of them being not quite what they were.
Today CBS and Fox are financially weak. NBC and ABC remain financially strong
CBS is a component of Paramount Global (formerly Viacom, see post above) valued today (“market cap”) at about $16 billion.
Fox is valued today at not much more: about $18 billion.
ABC is a part of Disney, which took a hit of about 1/3 in the past year but is still worth over $200 billion.
And NBC is a part of Comcast which also took a hit of about 1/3 in the past year but is still worth over $160 billion.
ABC and NBC have generally reported on the case well. CBS and Fox? Another story there.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/30/22 at 08:11 AM | #
As usual there are so many shibboleths and distortions in these clickbait articles, and the dash for cash, that they just become painful to read. Kate Mansey has sold her journalistic integrity for a pack of lies and a moment in the sunshine. Having re-examined the evidence, she says, and having re-interviewed Sollecito, she is more convinced of his innocence, she says. Hmmm. Must be his boyish charm and engaging honesty.
When working for the Sunday Mirror she had interviewed him shortly after the murder. The following is what she quoted him as saying.
“Yes I knew her. I found her body.”
“It is something I never hope to see again,” he said. “There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t take it all in.”
“My girlfriend was her flatmate and she was crying and screaming, ‘How could anyone do this?’”
Sollecito went on the tell the reporter (with reference to the night of the murder) that -
“It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to a party with one of my friends. The next day, around lunchtime, Amanda went back to their apartment to have a shower.”
Count the number of lies there.
She also says that Guede was a known burglar. No he was not. He had no previous convictions. She says he was freed in suspicious circumstances by the police after the Milan Nursery incident. Like the police knew what he was then likely to do? The reality is that he had an address, no previous, the premises were non-residential and there was no evidence of forced entry. He also had an explanation for being there, even if that was bullshit. So of course he got police bail while they investigated further. In the event he wasn’t charged with burglary but was convicted of being in possession of stolen goods (none of which could be proved to have come from the Nursery).
She then complains that as Guede had a fast track trial this was somehow prejudicial to Knox and Sollecito,specifically because Guede was not cross examined on his evidence. Never mind that Sollecito never gave any evidence at all at his trial, so could not be cross-examined. And had he been then, like Guede he would not have had to answer. Never mind that Guede had an account which specifically avoided naming either Knox or Sollecito as participants in the crime.
If this is the tenor of the forthcoming documentary, then I despair -again.
Posted by James Raper on 08/30/22 at 09:39 AM | #
@James
Incredible that anyone could believe he wasn’t involved when his story in the newspaper contradicts so heavily what he said to the police. How did you see the body? How did you know nothing had been taken from the flat? We despair.
Is this one of those documentaries where they trade access for a flattering story? I keep naively thinking that there must be demand for a true documentary about this but perhaps the Netflix’s of this world don’t want to be sued. It seems strange that there is such a high currency in nonsense. The streaming platforms are quite good at entertaining content, but appear to have very little of the BBC’s commitment to truth-telling, even more important than ever with people getting their news from Twitter and YouTube et al.
Posted by HotAir on 08/30/22 at 01:23 PM | #
Hi James R and Hotair
A week later, the Paramount-Plus component of this is looking like a fizzle.
I had taken a subscription I can cancel instantly (via PayPal: really handy to know that one can cancel repeating payments instantly) but the report is still a no-show in this region.
However, as this was a Netflix wannabe, it might still be useful to nail it, and you might perhaps want to subscribe, look at the report, perhaps transcribe it, and de-subscribe again courtesy of PayPal!
The Daily Mail is maybe much more worth setting right, as they might be delighted to be able to tell the UK and US about Rocco Sollecito… Post expanding on James’s great points by week’s end.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/07/22 at 10:59 AM | #
RIP much-loved Queen. She stood for people working together and in effect for systems being respected and enhanced on a group basis.
Our cup of tea! I’d recommend a pretty good movie (with some artistic license, and often very funny) about the key deflection point in her life.
It came at the end of WWII, when she began to pick up the baton from Churchill and George VI and came to really matter throughout the years.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/08/22 at 03:45 PM | #
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.
Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry Impressive Monarch’s Legal Accession System In UK Gives Charles III The Nod
Or to previous entry Georgia Meloni Likely To Become Italy’s First Woman Prime Minister Next Month