Category: Seattle context

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Deja Vu All Over Again: In A Time Warp Linda Byron Is STILL Actively Misleading Seattle

Posted by Peter Quennell





Click above for the “scoop” by Linda Byron and an out-of-date and unrelated video.

Linda Byron has in fact had the extraordinary Massei Report on the evidence and the sentencing reasons for Knox and Sollecito for THREE WEEKS and she even acknowledged it with thanks and said she would be sure to read it.

But apparently not yet. Amazingly, Linda Byron does not even MENTION Judge Massei’s Report here.

Linda Byron’s “scoop” on an FBI agent turns out to be about (surprise, surprise)  a claimed ex-FBI agent “Steve Moore” who (if he actually exists) seems to have zero track-record and reputation among current federal and local law enforcement who are watching the case.

Precisely these same few shoot-from-the-hip claims were made by “Steve Moore” several months ago on a website. Nothing new, nothing corrected, and still riddled with errors and false claims. They are so easy to shoot down that the posters over on PMF hardly even bothered to laugh at them before moving back to their usual careful in-depth discussions.

The Massei Report that Linda Byron studiously ignores now contradicts in very great detail the same few claims that “Steve Moore” makes - the evidence collection, the possible motives, the scenario on the night, the physical evidence, and the true nature of the interrogations.

And he simply leaves out altogether huge areas. Perhaps 80 percent of the whole.

The multiple alibis that contradicted one another and STILL contradict one another. The allegations that Knox made IN WRITING against Patrick when alone in a cell. The extensive luminol evidence and the extensive mixed-blood evidence. The telling behavior on the several days after. The sad facts of Meredith’s autopsy. The very extensive and very damning mobile phone records and transcripts. The computer records and recorded times it was switched on and off. The various eye-witness accounts. The facts and the reasoning that showed that there is no way that Rudy Guede could have acted alone. 

The few supportive comments below Linda Byron’s piece seem desperately grateful, and ultra-shallow on the real facts.  More hate-speech about Italy, of course. “The italian government and (in)justice system is regarded as one of the most corrupt in the first world. she would have gotten a fairer trial in mexico.”  Both those claims are untrue. Also as usual, very heavy promotion of a tainted and misleading FOA website apparently paid for by Curt Knox.

Ex FBI agent “Steve Moore” really should download and read the Massei Report and see why ALL of his claimed former colleagues consider this case to be closed.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/31/10 at 06:31 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in The officially involved,  Police and CSI,  News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context,  Hoaxers from 2007,  Knox-Marriott PR,  More hoaxers • Comments here (9)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Is Seattle Case Coverage STILL In Cloud-Cuckooland?

Posted by Peter Quennell





Click above for the West Seattle Herald story by (surprise surprise) Steve Shay.

Again, a complete lack of reporting of any of the hard facts. Again, a cynical, surrealistic and very misleading pull at Seattle’s heartstrings. 

Has news of the Micheli report and of the Friday-Saturday testimony still not reached Seattle? There’s not yet been an inch of good coverage in any Seattle outlet.

Seems Seattleites themselves are getting ready for some real talk now. These contrary perceptions appeared right under Steve Shay’s piece.

To Brian Jones [editor of the West Seattle Herald]

I am fascinated how you and Steve Shay try to benefit from the murder of Meredith Kercher and try to get exposure and publicity for yourselves out of this.

Fascinated is probably the wrong choice of word, disgusted fits better.

To date I have seen one plausible scenario, and one ridiculous attempt at pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.

The prosecutor’s scenario makes sense to me, and Amanda Knox’s scenario that she was not even there at the night of the murder does not.

Why was the washing machine running when police arrived, containing Meredith Kercher’s bloody clothes, when she had been dead for more than 12 hours?

A washing machine does not take 12 hours to wash clothes.

Why were Amanda Knox and Raffelle Sollecito at the murder scene with a mob and a bucket?

Why did the police find a receipt for 2 bottles of bleach purchased from a near-by store a few hours earlier?

Why does the shopkeeper of the store issuing the receipt say that it was Amanda Knox who bought the bleach?

Why did Amanda Knox tell police that Meredith Kercher usually locked her room door, when the other roommates say the opposite?

Why did Amanda Knox knew details of the position of the body, even though at the time the door was opened she was in no position to view the body as testified by witnesses?

Seattle media belatedly starting to corroborate or challenge these very damning perceptions would seem to be the best thing to do now.

For Seattle and for Amanda Knox both.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/11/09 at 04:18 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context,  Hoaxes Knox & team,  20 No-PR hoax,  Hoaxers from 2007,  Knox-Marriott PR,  Hoaxers: media groups,  Seattle press • Comments here (2)

Friday, January 09, 2009

Looks Like Seattle Post Intelligencer Could Be On The Rocks

Posted by Peter Quennell


Click above for the breaking story.

The Seattle PI offered the best Meredith-case reporting, Andrea Vogt’s, from Rome. And the worst Meredith-case blogging, Candace Dempsey’s, from Seattle.

Weird editorial judgment. To say the least. More of the former and an absence of the latter could have really boosted this newspaper’s prospects.

Here are our past takes on the paper’s general decline and one bright spot.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/09/09 at 03:10 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  Media developments,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context • Comments here (7)

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Another Seattle Post-Intelligencer Blog Bites Newspaper In Tail

Posted by Peter Quennell




Click above to read what appeared on a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog before it was yanked.

Biff! Bam! Pow! Take that, rival Seattle Times! So. Are the monkeys now driving the train at Hearst’s Seattle PI ?!

Seattle’s excellent TechFlash website had this to say about the yanked post.

Ah, the wonders of newspaper rivalries in the age of online media.

Regina Hackett, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s art critic, cast a critical eye on her departing counterpart, Sheila Farr of The Seattle Times, in a blistering blog post Monday afternoon on the P-I’s site. By this morning, the post had disappeared.

It was the kind of commentary that probably wouldn’t have made it into a traditional print edition. But as blogging spreads through the mainstream media, one result is a reduction in the editorial layers between journalist and audience.

Hmmm. “But as blogging spreads through the mainstream media, one result is a reduction in the editorial layers between journalist and audience.” 

So. You think that the editor of the Seattle PI, David McCumber, might finally have noticed that he could use a few more editorial layers?!

Hearst must be wondering about the monkeys layer. They could use less of that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/30/08 at 06:16 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  Media developments,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context • Comments here (9)

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Ominous Happenings At Hearst, Seattle PI’s Parent Company

Posted by Peter Quennell



Above and below, the attractive Seattle PI building, on Seattle’s wonderful waterfront.


And here are two shots (scroll down for the second) of owner Hearst’s attractive Manhattan headquarters.

We remain pretty intrigued by the Seattle PI. We can’t seem to see that it’s serving either Seattle’s or Hearst’s best interests right now.

The PI runs some of the very best stories on the Perugia case in the United States, filed by its cool, dispassionate reporter in Rome.

It also runs on its website what one reader called “the most dishonest blog in America” which is notorious for its fact-challenged one-sidedness and for fronting a secret book deal on the case.

And it has run no in-depth reporting at all on the Seattle angles of the case. 

Back here we mentioned the seemingly shaky economics of the paper, and the recent quite extraordinary drop in its readership.

Papers sold dropped by about 8 percent, in a period where the national drop was less than four (mostly related to the economic cycle), and where some media companies even saw real readership gains.

Our contacts in Manhattan’s great journalism schools seem to think the media industry’s best way forward for survival and growth is class journalism. Dig deeper, and avoid the vicarious thrills of, for example, blogs with an agenda

Our contacts regard the international Perugia case as a truly huge story. An absolute heaven-sent opportunity for the Seattle-based papers.

And they reckon that serious and imaginative handling of that story and its many intriguing Seattle angles could have dug the Seattle PI right out of its hole. And attracted a whole row of Pulitzer prizes.

Ball dropped. In a very serious and possibly life-threatening way.

So what is happening at Hearst’s HQ in Manhattan that relates to this?

Well, Hearst is privately owned, by a Hearst-family foundation, and they control most of the director seats on the board. They are said to be VERY unhappy with group performance.

Six months ago the CEO was forced out. And now there is a report that the interim CEO doesn’t meet with the family’s approval either. 

Expected outcome?

A new Hearst CEO who is expected to be be very hungry for more circulation and more Pulitzer prizes at Hearst’s seriously under-performing papers.

Such as, of course, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Time to get serious, guys…


Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/17/08 at 06:43 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  Media developments,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context,  Hoaxers from 2007,  More hoaxers • Comments here (2)

Friday, November 21, 2008

Hearst’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Now On The Defensive?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Seattle tip: The newsroom seems to despise the blog “reporting” described below and to think it is hurting the paper. If incorrect, newsroom, and you really do love it, please feel free to correct it.


[click for larger images]

Above at the right is Seattle PI editor David McCumber. Seems like a nice guy, with a distinguished career.

Yesterday we received a rather tart email from a staff-member. The tone made us curious. It seemed a little defensive. So we have taken a closer look.

We’ve already posted here on the paper and the case. We noted then that the paper is part of New York’s privately-owned Hearst empire. Our header box on the post noted this:

Normally, the Hearst papers are famous for CHAMPIONING victims’ rights and memories. Not for abusing them, in a defense blog they host.

We gave the paper an F grade for that performance. And an A grade for the excellent post-Guede-trial reporting indicated here.

The Seattle PI’s circulation has taken quite a dive this year. The paper has seen a drop of 7.8 percent in papers sold, to just 117,572 in October.

Its one competitor, the Seattle Times, also privately owned, saw a similar percentage drop, to 198,741 in October.

However, the Times sells a lot more newspapers, and it seems fundamentally stronger. 

Since 1983, the P-I and The Seattle Times have been run under a “Joint Operating Agreement” (JOA) whereby advertising, production, marketing, and circulation are run for both papers by the Seattle Times Co. They maintain separate news and editorial departments. The papers publish a combined Sunday edition, although the Times handles the majority of the editorial content while the P-I only provides a small editorial/opinions section.

If only one Seattle newspaper is left standing in the long run, which one might that be?

And might the Seattle PI be vulnerable, by way of that blog? It seems possible that its own legal people now think that it might be.

The so-called “reader’s blog” to which we have recently drawn attention is actually copyrighted. It has just bred a book deal, without consultation with the Kerchers. And it runs with some very high-impact paid advertising, flashing right alongside.

The paper seems to shrug the blog off as none of their business. Lawyers in New York here seem to doubt this attempted separation would carry far.

The blog was much criticized by readers in its early days, for seemingly being unable to mention the victim’s name. It’s attempting a lot of catch-up now, which seems to be fooling no-one.

It also has a bizarre history of ridiculing the prosecutor. Not something we’d have thought helpful to the ill-served Amanda Knox, now sitting in jail, awaiting his case against her.

And the blog has seen repeated waves of purges of comments in the past. HTML captures of the blog prior to these purges (there are many such captures) suggest the point of them is to eliminate any dissenting opinion or correction of wrong facts.

And perhaps to give a wrong impression of the blog’s viewpoint to any first-time readers. Or of the increasingly convincing state of the evidence.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer seems to host THE ONE NEWSPAPER SITE IN THE WORLD to carry comments deeply hostile toward the Kerchers themselves.

Not by the blogger, true. But they were long allowed to stand, and their right to stand was defended.

In the past several days, however, they have suddenly disappeared. And the google search below now no longer produces results.

Hmmm. Is yet another of the website’s many comment purges going on here? And this time, a legally-inspired purge?

Covering your tails, finally, are you Seattle PI? Legally, it makes very good sense. But another F grade for now.

One day we might upgrade you. But it’s the reporting we want to see change. And the blog toast.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/21/08 at 03:54 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context,  Hoaxers from 2007,  More hoaxers • Comments here (23)

Hearst’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Is The Editor Banning Truthseekers From Website? DRAFT

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above at the right is Seattle PI editor David McCumber. Seems like a nice guy, with a distinguished career.

The posts in question.

************


[click for larger images]

David, David, David:...

We have had such very high hopes for you out there at the Seattle PI. There our paper is, right at the heart of the of the brightest, wealthiest and most influential media markets in the world.

Our paper absolutely could be one of the flagships. Conveying what an exciting, beautiful, cultures and caring Seattle really is. Making the readership so proud to be part of it. Making those who might visit so keen to actually do so.

So we are a little stunned at your circulation down 10 percent, when the average loss is less than five and some papers actually are doiung very well.

So we let’s see here.

And here we have this incredibly moving and tragic case with a victim who has to have been one of the most sweetest and loveliest girls in the world - young and defenseless, exactly the kind of victims

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/21/08 at 04:19 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  Seattle context,  Hoaxers from 2007,  More hoaxers • Comments here (0)