Powerpoints #20: Diane Sawyer’s Very Tough Interview With Amanda Knox: ABC’s Sneak Preview!

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Gilbert and Sullivan had a vocal in their musical ‘HMS Pinafore’ which featured a song called

“I’m called little Butter cup”

Knox should learn this song since it describes her to a T, particularly the salacious implication concerning the last verse.

The toughest questions are usually also the most simple.

One example: “what kind of heating you have in the apartment?”

Few more suggestions:

“What happened to the Gubbio trip?”

“Why did you withdraw and then redeposit more money in your account?”

“Why did you decide not to attend the memorial?”

“How many sets of footwear you had those days?”

“If you knew what all you know today, what you would have done differently at that time?”

I certainly believe that if she would not have hired the great PR machine, her case would have been more sympathetically viewed, at least by…

I certainly do not think that many at FoA view her as really innocent!

Kermit, thank you. If Knox had a vigorous cross examination or tough interview of any sort, she would fold like a house of cards.

Good reminder of the ear witnesses who heard two persons’ footsteps running. It puts the lie to lone wolf myth.

Oh yeah, and Sollecito changed his version yet again, in his book, by claiming that he spent the night of November 1, 2007 replying to emails from his professors.

“Which of the several versions Sollecito provided do you agree with?”

“You’ve released true copies of your own statements to the police.  Shouldn’t Sollecito release his?”

“If you had to do it all over again, would you find a more reliable accomplice who didn’t withdraw your alibi, provide several conflicting versions, and gave impromptu interviews to journalists in the days after you committed the murder?”

“Why were you photographed running through a back yard of your native Seattle with a jacket over your head?  How many bestselling authors have you seen behaving like this?  Doesn’t everyone in America love you?”

Interesting that Amanda Knox, Jody Arias and OJ Simpson have the same birth date July 9th. Is this a coincidence or what?

Mind you Tom Hanks fits into the scenario as well, at least according to Google

Interesting photograph. Diane Sawyer is pleased, satisfied. She leans slightly toward Amanda whom she has enveloped in her own purposes, which are benign.

Amanda poses like a veritable Emily Dickinson except for that covert tilt of her head & those darkly staring eyes. A slight smile is overborne by her stare.

Diane Sawyer referred to a lot of breaking news that has so far for the most part been reported only in Italy.

Please scroll back up for some links to our most timely posts on 15 of the areas covered in the interview.

Did you guys photo shop Amandas head? Kidding

Diane…please ask why they did not attend the memorial of their dear friend Meredith Kercher?? If it were my dead friend, only and act of God would keep me away.
So telling, her answer will be.

Hi Chami and Bettina

Add your questions to the huge number here!

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C481/

Diane Sawyer - like many high-profile TV news anchors these days - wants to be seen as a sort of Walter Cronkite: an honest, balanced, serious, believable provider of news to a demanding audience. That’s also the legacy she’ll want to leave in History.

It would be a shame if her interview of Knox turned into a book-signing show with no real journalistic content.  Marriott and Graham are fully capable of setting up a folding table at Walmart if they want Knox to do book-signing.  Of course, these gentlemen want two things, 1) promote high volume sales and cash-in / have their own invoices paid up, and 2) spread the carefully painted image they have prepared of the innocent girl abroad amongst the nasty Italians and the Ivorian drifter with the long criminal record.

Sawyer has a choice, I hope. And if she doesn’t have a choice (because her network foisted Knox upon her), then she could simply call in sick. I do hope that Sawyer does an interview to be proud of, and that she doesn’t simply walk away with a signed copy of Knox/Graham’s book.

Thanks Kermit. Great interview. I share your hopes for Diane Sawyer. I don’t think she wanted this gig and there’s always a chance she’ll buck the script. More likely the best we’ll get is a question along the lines of, “Do you think people will ever stop believing you were involved?” Giving her yet another chance to play the victim.

I would ask AK why she was hiding her face with her jacket (histrionics?) while her “friend” Madison Paxton is shielding her, shortly after her statement to the world that she will hold her head up high.

I would also ask her about her boyfriend DJ whom she (supposedly) loved and missed so much while she was with another man *cough* RS, and indeed he attended court in Perugia on numerous occasions to support her.
PR exercise Amanda?
It’s just that when you got home you shacked up with a different man!
Of course, your people say you knew him from before - sure…
It is an indication of the throw away character of you and certainly tallies with the things people said about you who knew you in Perugia.
But I guess it’s just Amanda being Amanda right?
How is DJ anyway?

Quote from an interview with Luciano Ghirga:

“There are people around the figure of Amanda who have no formal role in the student’s defence team…These gentlemen are not only not helping our client in the difficult judicial process in the Corte d’Assise in which we have to defend her, but on the contrary, they are harming her judicial position.”

Question: “Ms Knox, would you state whether you agree or disagree with your legal team here?”

@Bettina

Your question is on the mark because it does, in fact, look as if Amanda’s “head” has been borrowed from another photograph & pasted onto a body it doesn’t belong to.

Reinforced by the fact of a disproportion visible here. The head is too large for this prim rigid body. In fact, the head is rather large compared with Ms Sawyer’s.

Be interesting if we could ever learn the truth of the matter (ha!) because I think it might surprise us.

Definitely seems a photoshop job when you look at it.  The colouring of the head is different.

@Bettina, @Ernest and @Jar: sorry if that actually appears to be Knox with Diane Sawyer. The original image is Diane Sawyer, together with Katie Couric and Brian Williams. Since there is no sneak-preview of the interview available, I decided to make my own.
=========================

I once read an article about a skilled carpenter who did a job interview for the CIA ... you know, once in a while spies need cupboards with false walls, or a small decorative box with a secret compartment. One of the questions was: “are you capable of doing poor quality work?”, i.e. his potential employers wanted to know if he was skilled enough to make a really good project look shoddy, if need be.

In the same light, I muse as to whether we’ll see the ABC wardrobe & hairdressing department getting asked by the Knox PR folks to do a lousy washing and drying of Amanda’s hair, in order to limit her on-set contrast with the photos of when the telecoms police stumbled on the happy couple looking surprised and tired in front of the cottage.

“I muse as to whether we’ll see the ABC wardrobe & hairdressing department getting asked by the Knox PR folks to do a lousy washing and drying of Amanda’s hair, in order to limit her on-set contrast with the photos of when the telecoms police stumbled on the happy couple looking surprised and tired in front of the cottage”.

I think they’ve already done that one Kermit.
I seem to remember her turning up at court on several occasions and on seeing the images I think her appearance was quite stage managed.

It struck me as being contrived and as being a counter to when I posted the images of the freshly “showered and blowdried Knox” in which she was rather unkempt and in conversation with a very groomed and not a hair out of place Napoleoni.

There is a clip of the interview at: http://abc10ways-1.wistia.com/medias/j2d0g4jtof

On a different topic, is it true that Raffaele Sollecito—the little twerp—has moved to Switzerland?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9993348/Amanda-Knoxs-ex-boyfriend-Raffaele-Sollecito-moves-to-Switzerland-for-the-quiet-life.html

@devorah

Thank you, devorah—& what a contrast between the living Amanda & the scarecrow prop which kermit has posted.

Brief though it is (I watched it three times running) we see Amanda in her best light. This is a good looking young woman, very much at her ease in dealing with Ms Sawyer.  She is dressed not quite modestly but almost & knows how to show leg (& plenty of it.)

Get ready for it, people. This will be a tremendously effective interview for Amanda & it will surely evoke an immense American response. That in turn will have its bearing on the outcome in Italy.

Good Lord, I said devorah—sorry but its louiehaha.  Old guy’s mistake. (A woman my same age, 81, a friendly speaking acquaintance who, in truth, didn’t look her age, “dropped dead” while gardening in our modest village just a couple of days ago.  She’d seen me in the supermarket that day, I was intent on produce & she reached out to touch me & say hello in passing—whereupon I turned & greeted her by name.  Seeming the very picture of good cheer & health & she went home &
died.

Forgive the irrelevancy but such things are on my mind when I think of the oddments & peculiarities of old age.

@ devorah. Yes, Switzerland. Take a look at my links in this comment on 28 March here:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/12_tips_for_reporters/#c14371

“Diane Sawyer - like many high-profile TV news anchors these days - wants to be seen as a sort of Walter Cronkite: an honest, balanced, serious, believable provider of news to a demanding audience. That’s also the legacy she’ll want to leave in History.”

@Kermit

That “wants to be seen as” might be a big country phenomenon. Where I live there’s hardly room for PR. You ARE honest or soon will be clear you ARE NOT honest. In the comments here I read a lot of efforts to “make” Diana Sawyer real. (please be real 😊 )

I might sound naive, but where I live I put on tv to hear the truth or the struggle about that.

“leaving a legacy in history” drive, sounds like acting, not like living.

Just some obeservations.

BTW: I believe for Knox it is end of story anyway. Whatever Hihaho PR Extravaganza.

Thanks Louiehaha for the link of the pretaped interview glimpse.

Where are the days when TV shows were done “before a live studio audience”?

How many takes were necessary to do the Amanda interview? How many minutes were excised? Who had a prior or post say in what would stay in or out?

Sawyer and Knox almost look like girl-friends about to go out on the town together.

As Jessie J sings:
  “Seems like everybodys got a price,
  I wonder how they sleep at night.
  When the sale comes first,
  And the truth comes second,
  ... Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
  Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
  Wanna make the world dance,
  Forget about the Price Tag.”

Kermit,

As to who had a say in the content, wasn’t Nikki “the babysitter” Battiste the producer on this show? The truth never stood a chance.

Ernest,

I watched the clip a few times too. The headlines are just stunning: “An American daughter, whose dream turned nightmare”

That’s a rather lavish provocation of sympathy for a suspected sex killer. One might think she were the victim not the perp.

While scrolling through James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) posts I learned that the girl who formerly occupied Meredith’s room was named Marta. The post was 29th September, 2011, 04:01pm by Scorpion NITE. He quoted from police recordings of what the Marche boys said, from police recording dated 4/11/2007. Another theory on this JREF discussion was that perhaps Meredith had returned to cottage and surprised Rudy, Amanda, and Raf as they were breaking the window to cover the fact they’d stolen Meredith’s money to pay Rudy for drugs. Though not connected to this theory, the thread also quoted Popper who linked to an expert explaining there’s no such thing as a motiveless crime.

“An American daughter, whose dream turned nightmare”?

An American daughter, without a dream, whose life was, is and will be a nightmare.

American university student newspaper reporting on the case has been appalling. Only ever one exception that we have spotted (Harvard). U/Washington and Pepperdine University papers were always blatantly biased. Here is a University of Maryland newspaper article warning about all those meanie foreigners.

http://umwbullet.com/2013/04/18/knox-case-refocuses-safety-abroad/

I wrote this to their editors:

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

Dear Editors.

A nasty xenophobic article with facts wrong in it.

In fact American students commit several murders and other serious crimes a year in Italy and various other countries. Ask the State Department. Ask the embassies. Those justice systems behave very fairly.

American students in fact get breaks time and again. And there is a well known phenomenon in which when American students go abroad their drink and drug intake often doubles.

And Knox is NOT standing trial again. Her people bent the automatic appeal last time and so it is being done again by the book. She was treated VERY fairly.

Peter Quennell

Hi Ernest.

“Get ready for it, people. This will be a tremendously effective interview for Amanda & it will surely evoke an immense American response. That in turn will have its bearing on the outcome in Italy. “

Not very likely the intended outcome.

The Florence appeal court and Cassation #2 are expected to play it by the book and Knox could incur serious new prison time if she is charged with contempt of court on the same lines as Sollecito already is - and for which he could face 6 to 9 years.

I received a warm email from someone in ABC saying they might ask to use some of the images (they’re mine) in these groups:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmkphotosperugia/comments/walled_city_central_street_down_to_the_chic_bar/

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmkphotosperugia/comments/walled_city_central_the_chic_bar/

Poor old Patrick’s bar was empty that night. I saw 3-4 people in it another night, but it was not officially open.

Somewhat isolated down there on the south side, most of the bars are on the north side nearer the university, but that might have been shrewd business.

Meredith was someone’s daughter too ...

I am an incurable optimist and keep thinking that this media foolishness will balance itself. Even if just a little. Does anyone think that maybe ABC has plans to put a post script on the infomercial? In other words, tag on some piece of balanced perspective? Or even information about cassation or (fingers crossed) details about the latest cassation report (provided it’s ready in time?) I am heartened by Peter’s mention that he was contacted.

I read a book by Deborah Tannen some years ago, The Argument Culture, which really resonated for me. She suggests that western culture and very specifically our “news media culture” is stuck in an “equal and opposite” dialectic where one point of view is always balanced with another. Usually extremes. And without qualitative weight to either argument. She uses the example of a colleague who was asked to appear on a news program to argue the occurrence of the holocaust alongside another guest who would be arguing that it never happened. As if those two arguments have equal weight by the nature of their being two sides of a dialectic. (Very much like arguing with some of the whackier FOA theories out there. It almost feels demeaning to have to engage with such absurdities and their arguments draw the discourse down.)

Anyway. Instinct tells me that the media is going to want to start putting up some kind of rebuttal, some kind of counter-point. If nothing else it’s fiscally responsible reporting (conflict sells more than the innocent abroad with all of these inconvenient judgements and hearings ongoing in Italy with many many judicial professionals feeling very confident of her guilt Not a clean feel-good story.)

The New York Times summarizes and reviews Knox’s book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/books/in-memoir-amanda-knox-testifies-in-public-court-of-approval.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So we can expect there to be many defamations and many false claims and a contempt of court investigation by the Florence chief prosecutor.

Sorry to be obtuse but am still not sure of this next “trial”, Peter.

If it is a re-run of the Hellman appeal, done properly this time, then the defence get to state the same as last time and the process can be sidetracked again.

However, as you say, if it addresses Massei’s supposed errors and it comes out that they weren’t errors, then it backfires on them.

I’ve just been looking at the debate at PMF on the CCTV and arrival of the police and even given discrepancies, it still confirms quite suspicious behaviour and lies, let alone all the rest of it.

Do you think that sort of thing will come up again?

Hi James

Actually both the defense at trial and the defense at Hellmann appeal were floundering. They never ever got in any good shots on their own account. When Mignini was interrogating Amandas in mid 2009 they were virtually screaming at him to stop. (He and Comodi got a lot out of AK anyway.)

Defense threw a few points in the air in 2010 for the scope of the appeal hoping that Hellmann would nibble. He didnt nibble very much then but for reasons we cant yet post about he later extended his mandate to looking at all evidence and witnesses without actually LOOKING at them. Also he illegally introduced the C&V consultancy which cant happen the next time around.

Cassation doesnt want anything remotely like this next time around. They insist on Florence as the venue which means fresh new judge and prosecutor. They insist on Massei being made front and center again (in several different ways they show they accepted Massei). They insist on knowing WHO the three people were who attacked Meredith, not just jailbird gossip. They want explained why Knox fingered Patrick and they have declared that to be a part of the main crime. 

Your second option is correct. To the extent the defenses set Hellmann and his report up, it now seriously backfires on them

Peter, thank you for responding to one of my effusions & thanks, too, for your many pert references.

Although technically non-committal, I thought the Times review was favorable toward Amanda.

What I feel intuitively about the Knox-Sollecito case just now can be put in two different ways. For one thing, Judgment (& I mean, Judgment of the people, here & abroad.)  We know by now that whatever else (& I am firm in my belief in their guilt) Knox & Sollecito are not another Bonny & Clyde. Yes, they sank into a psychotic disfigurement resulting in rape & murder—once.  But everything since seems to show that such a thing won’t happen again with either one of them.

And the other thing: Forgiveness.  I don’t mean at all by this that I have forgiven them & that everybody else should, too.  Oh no. But what I seem to sense is that, based on the judgment above, people generally are inclined to let them go at this point. Over & done.

Or to use yet again that term I’ve used before (& it’s no part of my working vocabulary) Fait accompli.  As if the common attitude were to say: Look, the thing is over & done.  Yes, they’re guilty but they’ve paid a price for it.  Just leave it alone.

Question in my mind is whether that attitude may prevail.

News from Seattle - It seems to me that nobody can / wants to stop her now:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Amanda-Knox-sometimes-paralyzed-with-anxiety-203681041.html

i sent RS a message on Facebook and he actually replied to me - though after 2 messages i realized there wasn’t much point; i had asked him about the cell phones that were turned off and then back on at the same time and he said there was bad reception at his apartment and the towers couldn’t get the signal or something, and he said he didn’t take away Amanda’s alibi that the detectives got the nights confused

Knox is headline news again, Yahoo News. She claims she is now often “paralyzed” with fear and helplessness, has to “breathe through it”, afraid even to hope; sounds like anxiety attacks to me. She did an interview for “People” magazine at Edda’s home. She also has mentioned she was so discouraged in prison she thought of swallowing glass or smothering herself with garbage bags. The Daily Mail has her back in news, ABC has her, she has her hair quite long now and its natural color. She does look more reserved and serious in facial demeanor than we ever saw her DURING MEREDITH’S MURDER TRIAL, which she giggled through.

Suicidal ideation ?

PEOPLE MAGAZINE interview:

“Things creep up on me and all of a sudden I’m overwhelmed by the feeling of helplessness and that desperation and fear to even hope. Just that can make my heart race and makes me paralyzed until I can breathe it away.”

She is telling the Truth here but casting it in a different light for public consumption.

Thanks, Peter, for the review from the NY Times.

Whoa ...  a “new one” here :

“While imprisoned in Italy for four years over the murder of her roommate, Amanda Knox fended off sexual harassment from guards and an overture from a cellmate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/books/in-memoir-amanda-knox-testifies-in-public-court-of-approval.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I cannot wait to hear what the court investiation has to say about Knox’s “fairy tale book.”

Have a nice evening !

MizzMarple

Where next:

Or to next entry Powerpoints #21: On Contradictions, Here Preston Contradicts Preston

Or to previous entry Powerpoints #19: Placing The Noisy Claimant Doug Preston In The Hot Seat