Media's Embarrassing Treatment of Ramsey Case Reaches Its Apex

[Bob Geiger]

There should be a lot of very red faces in newsrooms all over the United States right about now -- there should be, but I doubt there will be.

As many legal experts had theorized might happen, Boulder, Colorado prosecutors today dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey. It appears that a DNA sample taken from Karr simply does not match DNA from JonBenet Ramsey's body, making it likely that Karr was just an attention-seeker trying to get a quick 15 minutes of fame and dupe a scandal-hungry media into playing along.

Mission accomplished.

It remains unclear whether Karr will be released or extradited to California to face child pornography charges there.

Samples of Karr's DNA had been taken upon his arrival in Boulder on Thursday and they were tested at the Denver Police Department's crime lab over the weekend. Despite his insistence that he killed Ramsey -- and the 10-day media frenzy that has followed -- the tests have failed to put him at the scene of the crime and he may be released entirely by the end of the week.

What is amazing to me is the media circus that has followed this "case" for almost two weeks now without really a shred of proof that anything had truly developed in the 10-year-old mystery. And we're not just talking about an informational mention on page six or seven of the local newspaper, or a 90-second story buried in the second half of a one-hour newscast.

We're talking about hour upon hour of coverage, with some cable news networks devoting the entire hour of a 60-minute newscast to a developing story that could very well have turned out to be a lot of noise about nothing. We're talking about alleged journalists and editors whose judgment made them decide that John Mark Karr's plane ride from Thailand to the United States, where he sat, who he talked to, what he ate and even what procedure was used to allow him to use the bathroom was their very top story.

All of this without the most basic elements of proof that freshman journalism students taking Reporting 100 are taught to look for.

Unbelievable.

And this giant waste of time and resources, occurred at the expense of real news affecting real lives: A major crisis in the Middle East, a civil war in Iraq that's killing an average of 100 Iraqis a day and with our troops stuck smack-dab in the middle of it. We have a major portion of our population without the means to get a simple medical check-up because they have no health insurance, more Americans in poverty, a devastating budget deficit and hurricane season upon us with FEMA in no better shape than it was a year ago when it bungled Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, and those people whose lives were sidelined by Katrina a year ago, tomorrow? Most of them still haven't received any help.

But none of that -- not one bit of it -- was more important over the last 10 days than a specious confession, to a murder long ago and with very little in the way of proof to go along with it.

We should read, see and hear some major mea culpas across every spectrum of the American media for wasting everyone's time over the last two weeks and, if there's a price to pay for total journalistic incompetence, more than a few editors should be fired. That should happen -- but it won't.

The best we can hope for is that the media will take a good, long, collective look in the mirror and hopefully feel some shame over what buffoons they have been over this non-story and how much they have let the American people down.

I'm sure a few will feel that guilt -- at least until the next blonde chick goes missing in the Caribbean.

You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. These people simply fill the space between advertisements

Stop buying the products in between the puff stories and the puff stories won't get far

[midnight]

3. Exaclty right. They expect us to read about the real news on

the internet.

[PSPS]

2. They aren't embarrassed because they did what they were supposed to

This was a classic win-win for the media.

All television & cable "news" outlets these days are nothing more than entertainment programs. They are required to turn a profit, so they have become animated tabloids.

This particular story was a boon for a couple of reasons, both of which benefit the roles that contemporary media plays:

1. Sex sells, especially sex with children. One had to read very carefully to find any mention that the "DNA" from the crime scene consisted of fingernail scrapings. In almost every case, the stories were vague in an attempt to make the reader think there was semen either in the girl herself or on her underwear (there was neither.)

2. This was a way to push the usual bush scandals and crimes off the news cycle. As you pointed out, coverage of every minute detail of what Karr did, ate, defecated was used to consume entire news days, thus allowing the media to continue their indefatigable propping up of the fraud that is the bush cabal.

It is disgusting, isn't it?

[DinahMoeHum]

4. Shit, I tuned out on all this a long time ago

n/t

[jpgray]

5. Cheap to cover though, and a ratings getter

And with a for-profit media mindset in this country, this sort of half-assed reporting will happen time and time again.

[Mike03]

6. Perfect Post

Recommended.

Exactly. I couldn't say it any better than this.

[cliss]

7. Moral of the Story:

Turn off your TV. Unplug it from the wall. Take it out to your garage. Use it as a prop for something else, like a box of apples or Top Ramen.

That's what I did. I now get ALL my news from the Internet. These jerks deserve to go out of business. And you know what? They will, at the rate they're going. More and more people are turning off their TV's. Newspaper readership is down. TV viewership is down.

The Internet, though......is UP.