[BC] And Broadcasters wonder why they are held in low esteem?

[Reader]

The JonBenet Fraud
By 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/08/29/BL2006082900341.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns>Howard 
Kurtz
WASHINGTON POST

Will every anchor, correspondent and producer who shamelessly hyped 
the John Mark Karr story now apologize for taking the country for a ride?

Don't hold your breath.

This was such a sham, from the opening moments, that it instantly 
goes down with the greatest media embarrassments in modern history.

A strange, creepy character emerges from the shadows of Thailand and 
says he killed JonBenet Ramsey a decade ago? A guy with no known 
connection to the family? A yutz whose own relatives, including an 
ex-wife who hates him, says he wasn't even in Colorado at the time?

This is what produces 25-hour-a-day cable coverage, causes the 
network morning shows to go nuts and even tops the nightly news two 
days straight? Aren't the TV types who pumped up this empty balloon 
just a little bit ashamed?

Oh, and does the New York Daily News run a retraction for its banner 
headline "SOLVED"?

Of course, you will now hear that it was all the fault of the Boulder 
D.A., Mary Lacy, for arresting Karr in the first place. And maybe 
that was a dumb move. But the last time I checked, she didn't own any 
television stations. Of course you would report that some wack job 
had claimed to have killed JonBenet, but the resulting frenzy 
suggests that many journalists either didn't know or didn't care that 
strange people sometimes make false confessions in high-profile cases.

And yet things got so crazed that reporters jumped on the flight that 
brought Karr to the U.S., and the morning shows were interviewing 
fellow passengers about what he ate and so on.

The original JonBenet media circus in 1996 and 1997 became the 
template for all the missing-or-murdered cases involving pretty young 
women that followed: Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, 
Natalee Holloway. In the wake of O.J., television discovered that a 
tragedy affecting an unknown family--what once would have been 
dismissed as a local story--could be turned into a national soap 
opera through sheer repetition. And there was that steady media 
drumbeat of Did the parents do it? that, in retrospect, seems 
terribly unfair to John and Patsy Ramsey. Facts don't matter in 
frenzies; what matters is camera-ready speculation, where opposing 
lawyers and ex-prosecutors can argue on one talk show after another.

Usually, the press is unfair to people like Richard Jewell, who say 
they didn't commit some crime; here, Karr said he did do the deed, 
but that hardly lets us off the hook, especially as the contrary 
evidence continued to mount.

So Karr was a fake, and the media caravan moves on. But I don't think 
the public forgets. They should teach this one in journalism schools 
for a long time.

Some leads this morning:

<http://www.denverpost.com/jonbenet/ci_4253409>Denver Post : "The 
murder case against John Mark Karr collapsed in a heap of bizarre 
e-mails Monday, dealing another blow to the decade-long search for 
JonBen?t Ramsey's killer."

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/us/29ramsey.html?hp&ex=1156824000&en=16f4d6412f56ca0e&ei=5094&partner=homepage>NYT 
: "The announcement by the Boulder County district attorney, Mary T. 
Lacy, incited a storm of questions about why Mr. Karr, 41, had been 
believed in his admissions and how he could have led prosecutors into 
what became an elaborate global farce. Hordes of reporters had 
tracked Mr. Karr's journey, from his apprehension in Thailand nearly 
two weeks ago to his return to the United States."

How he could have led prosecutors into a farce? What about those 
hordes of reporters ?

And the 
<http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/447672p-376805c.html>Daily 
News 's big climb-down? Not so much. "LIAR IS FOUND OUT":

"The creep who convinced Colorado prosecutors he might be JonBenet 
Ramsey's killer was unmasked as a liar yesterday after his DNA failed 
to match genetic material on the slain 6-year-old's body."

There we go again: The creep who convinced prosecutors. Not the creep 
who convinced editors.

<http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4953099,00.html>Rocky 
Mountain News : "When people confess to a crime they did not commit, 
it's usually to put an end to coercive interrogation, several experts 
said Monday.

"But there is a smaller group of people who become so obsessed about 
the smallest details of a case, they convince themselves that they 
committed the crime."

Well, now it's been confirmed: Richard Armitage was the other secret 
source in Plamegate. 
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/>Mike Isikoff 
summarizes the findings of a new book of which is he the coauthor: 
(<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/08/29/BL2006082900341.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns>read 
more)