The recent news headlines on the police investigation of the murder of a John Jay College student irrates me because it is part of the growing trend of the media morphing into the unnoffical judge and jury of crimes.
To elaborate, New York news outlets seem to constantly focus on the police search of suspect Darryl Littlejohn in the case even though, as of March 7th, he has not been officially charged. Whether or not he is guilty, Littlejohn will never live a normal, private life. Newspapers do have the right to publish any news on an ongoing crime case, but they should be more conscious of their writing, especially when facts and evidence are not 100 percent clear.
An example of the media hurting an wrongfully accused person is the 2002 incident of the Middle-Eastern medical students believed to be terrorists. At first, the media stated that four Middle Eastern students had sped through speed tolls after they left a diner where they said they'd "bring it down." The news saw this as a great story, especially since it was just days after the 9/11 anniversary. The television news networks and some print publications saw this as a great story, and glamorized it as a "high speed “cops vs. robbers” chase." It was later revealed that they did not speed through the toll, and they had been taking about bringing a car down to Florida. Too little too late, as their med school expelled them. They were almost deported for this misunderstanding.
If journalists truly want to serve the public's best interest, they should throughly look at the facts and stop speculating about things they don't know.
Wei Man Tang @ Wed, 03/08/2006 - 1:12pm
Publications want a draw, they want something to attract attention, they want a suspected "bad guy" in the story to do that in an unsolved murder case and that's basically what's going on here. Here we have the primary suspect, he's going to be the central focus, and as long as the paper doesn't cross into the area of "libel" in their writing then all the implications they make, no matter how heavy or strong, are apparently legal, maybe not right but legal.
Meanwhile the 2002 Middle-Eastern medical student scenario really doesn't have any "suspected" excuse at all considering it seems more like blatant misreporting (direct links to Lexis Nexis and the like doesn't work after some period of time by the way). But hey, it's an attention grabbing story, especially given the timely nature of it, so to heck with journalistic integrity and the lives of other people. (note: there was sarcasm for those that missed it)
Thing is stories look for a draw, here it's the suspect and it's something to throw to the readers to latch on to. It's unfortunate but it does happen.