Another good article, in addition to my earlier post, about the Media manipulation of this sad little story…
From Howard Kurtz via The Daily Beast:
What television news was guilty of was massive overkill. There was absolutely no reason for the TV business to turn the death of 2-year-old Caylee into a national soap opera—that is, short of milking the story for ratings. (Newspapers and magazines have largely stayed off this bandwagon.)
Sadly, many children are killed by parents in the United States each year, and most barely merit a short story in the local paper. If they’re African-American, they are barely on the radar. Casey Anthony is white, middle-class and attractive—the trifecta for producers and bookers.
Such trials are the spawn of O.J., whose murder case dominated the media in the mid-1990s. But Simpson was a world-famous athlete. Chandra Levy at least worked for a member of Congress. Since then, television news has tried to fill the void by taking unknown victims and defendants—Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway—and turning them into cause celebres so that viewers would develop a rooting interest in the players and the subplots.
I find it sickening, which is why I’ve largely avoided writing or talking about the Anthony case until now. Like many of those who even casually followed the story, I thought she was probably guilty. But I never understood why I should care about this murder above so many others. Let’s be honest with ourselves: this is the exploitation of tragedy until it becomes entertainment. And that’s why the situation is even worse than the indictment by Anthony’s lawyer would suggest.
July 05, 2011 07:05pm
Lost in the 21st Century 