JonBenet coverage makes me feel ashamed to be a journalist

[n2doc]

JonBenet coverage makes me feel ashamed
Commentary: It's no wonder that the public hates journalists
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Aug 23, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- I'm ashamed to be a journalist. Yes, again.
Like little kids who continually put their hands in a flame and get burned every time, my profession just never learns from its mistakes. We have an unfortunate habit of hyping the wrong stories. Over and over. And when it comes to assessing the effect that our foolishness has on our craft's reputation, it's practically a fatal flaw. The most recent shining, hideous example of our collective disgraceful judgment is the coverage of the flake who claims he killed JonBenet Ramsey a decade ago. When the young Colorado girl was found dead 10 years ago during the notoriously slow Christmas news season, the saga had all the ingredients of a great pulp-nonfiction media sensation: a little (white) girl's mysterious death, suspicion centering on her parents and the utter inability of law enforcement figures to solve the case. (I suspect that there wouldn't have been a comparable media storm, if a little girl of color had been found dead.)
Here we go all over again. Yes, I'm sorry to say it: the circus is back in town.

No wonder people hate the media. I do, too, sometimes. We drop the ball again and again and yet we act baffled and indignant when those polls come out saying that in the public's view, journalists are one cut above, say, sanitation workers. We feel hurt when the public tells us that it hates and distrusts our profession. Then we blow it all over again with a story like the JonBenet example. How did the media bungle this story? Let me count the ways:

When a kook named John Mark Karr stepped out from under a rock and insisted he was the little girl's true killer, reporters acted as if his strange confession had to be a slam-dunk. Where was the natural skepticism toward someone who so desperately wants to be famous? Of course, it's nothing new for news organizations to believe people at face value. Just as the media blindly trust the words of politicians and CEOs who issue self-serving press releases, we initially believed Karr. He offered such dubious testimony -- his own ex-wife asserted that he couldn't have done it because he was allegedly in Alabama at the time of the murder -- that he might as well have copped to killing JFK instead of JonBenet.

Television networks constantly presented the grotesque footage of JonBenet as a toddler cavorting around like a pint-sized Madonna. Maybe it wasn't quite "kiddie-porn," as some horrified pundits claimed. But it was close enough.

Worst of all, the media relentlessly played up the importance of this pathetic story at the expense of following the real news of the day, in Iraq and the Middle East.

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?siteid=mktw&dist=nwhfriend&rid=em_story_e_main&guid={6CE4D38A-D760-4FA3-B6FF-48715BB4D8A5}

[Kagemusha]

1. One step above sanitation workers? Both professions deal in muck.

Lots of it.

[MADem]

5. I'd say a step or ten below--at least those clowns covering that story to

death.

Sanitation workers provide a valuable service--they clear the shit away from the public. These idiots are shoving it in our faces.

[Kagemusha]

8. Gotta admit, you have a point there.

Well phrased.

[applegrove]

2. I'm staying so far away from the TV. I don't know what makes me

puke more. The make-up and hair dye her mommie had her done up in... or the fact that some freak is getting a few days of media fame.

I may have to avoid the news for the next year. The whole sordid crime is too much for me to even go near.

[TheFriedPiper]

3. Well, when you give the stupid people what they want....

...and stupid people just can't get enough of stories like this.

Stories that actually affect the nation are too complex to understand.

[nam78_two]

4. JonBenet coverage makes me feel ashamed to be human/nt

[Double T]

6. I thought REAL JOURNALISTS had become extinct.......

none have been sited for the last six years.

[The Anti-Neo Con]

7. Get used to Jon Benet 24/7 for the next few years.

I have a feeling this case could get more media coverage than the OJ Simpson case did.

[kerstin]

9. It's not the "journalists" making these decisions.

"Worst of all, the media relentlessly played up the importance of this pathetic story at the expense of following the real news of the day, in Iraq and the Middle East."

Wasn't that the point?

[kskiska]

10. Even Mark Klaas, who usually gets trotted out in these cases

is sickened by this coverage. He appeared with Paula Zahn last night, and after she bombarded him with the usual smarmy questions, he said something to the effect of "after tonight I'm not going to talk about this until something significant happens."

She was crestfallen, but she persisted with her line of questioning.

[GeorgeGist]

11. It's long overdue...

that real journalists start discrediting their fake counterparts.