Casey Anthony Verdict Reading (courtesy of ABC News)
Perhaps the most amusing response came from Kim Kardashian, who tweeted, "WHAT!!!!???!!!! CASEY ANTHONY FOUND NOT GUILTY!!!! I am speechless!!!" Many fellow users distilled the irony that was dripping from Ms. Kardashian's < 140 character response, including user HaHaWhitePPL, who succinctly responded, "So was Nicole Brown Simpson's family when your dad got OJ off."
What Ms. Kardiashan's enthusiastic use of punctuation illustrates is the American public's willingness to attach itself to the sentimental or emotional angle of a story that completely precludes them from approaching the issue with a semblance of objectivity. A little girl died meaninglessly. This we know. As human beings, we attempt to fill in the rest to fit our subjective image of the world around us. We simply do not want to live in a world where an evil that could allow that to happen can go unpunished.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1963, "When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man." Somewhere, in the aftermath of the Casey Anthony verdict and a deep-seated desire to see our own justice fulfilled through the courts, we forgot about this. That is the power of the media narrative. It can inspire charges of a complete failure of a legal system (despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking Casey to the death of her child) built to defend against the fallibility of human reason. The jurors in the Casey Anthony case did exactly as they were supposed to do (and something no one who digested the daily news media coverage of the trial, with its bombardment of innocent images of Caylee)--dispassionately examine the evidence and render a verdict based on the arguments presented. That's a success--not a failure--of the American legal system.
Today, British tabloid News of the World announced Sunday's issue would be the last of the publication, which has enjoyed 168 years of uninterrupted circulation. In those 168 years, the tabloid has come under fire for numerous reasons, including clandestine investigative reporting schemes hatched by Mazher Mammod, who's been investigated on two separate occasions by the Attorney General. What ultimately closed down the operations of the tabloid, however, was the extension of a phone hacking controversy to the case of a 13 year-old missing girl whose body was found murdered.
"The revelation this week that victims may have included the murdered girl, the families of terror victims and of British troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, raised the scandal to a new level," states the CNN story. Loss of advertising revenue and support from high-ranking government officials and interest groups following the revelation of the extent of the phone hacking doomed the tabloid.
I don't mean to belittle the lives of the two young girls lost meaninglessly in these two stories. What should be clear is that, as a culture, we attach special significance to narratives that play upon our emotional weaknesses as human beings. Both newsmakers and reporters are aware of this. To be discerning consumers of their product, we should be, too.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1963, "When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man." Somewhere, in the aftermath of the Casey Anthony verdict and a deep-seated desire to see our own justice fulfilled through the courts, we forgot about this. That is the power of the media narrative. It can inspire charges of a complete failure of a legal system (despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking Casey to the death of her child) built to defend against the fallibility of human reason. The jurors in the Casey Anthony case did exactly as they were supposed to do (and something no one who digested the daily news media coverage of the trial, with its bombardment of innocent images of Caylee)--dispassionately examine the evidence and render a verdict based on the arguments presented. That's a success--not a failure--of the American legal system.
Today, British tabloid News of the World announced Sunday's issue would be the last of the publication, which has enjoyed 168 years of uninterrupted circulation. In those 168 years, the tabloid has come under fire for numerous reasons, including clandestine investigative reporting schemes hatched by Mazher Mammod, who's been investigated on two separate occasions by the Attorney General. What ultimately closed down the operations of the tabloid, however, was the extension of a phone hacking controversy to the case of a 13 year-old missing girl whose body was found murdered.
"The revelation this week that victims may have included the murdered girl, the families of terror victims and of British troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, raised the scandal to a new level," states the CNN story. Loss of advertising revenue and support from high-ranking government officials and interest groups following the revelation of the extent of the phone hacking doomed the tabloid.
I don't mean to belittle the lives of the two young girls lost meaninglessly in these two stories. What should be clear is that, as a culture, we attach special significance to narratives that play upon our emotional weaknesses as human beings. Both newsmakers and reporters are aware of this. To be discerning consumers of their product, we should be, too.
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