Quote:
Originally posted by smooth
People are walking around "thinking he did it" without ever seeing any of the evidence, being present in the courtroom, or having personal knowledge of the case based on information (much of it incorrect, we now find out) the prosecution continued to leak to the press early in the process.
This is one of the times the news is doing us a service, unlike when they pumped the speculation all over the airwaves. A bunch of idle speculation and commentary doesn't do much good for protecting the public from overzealous investigators and prosecutors--detailing their tampering and deceit does.
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This is the thing that gets me the most about this. I firmly believe in the importance of innocent until proven guilty, but the media clearly does not. I think this tenet of our legal system is so important that I'm willing to accept (as were those who created it) that some guilty people would get off in favor of avoiding innocent people being found guilty. It is the backbone of our legal system. However, even when revelations are coming out about tampering in this case and misconduct by the police and such, the reporting is laced with bias against Scott Peterson.
I'll be honest and say I think he's probably guilty, but based on what I've heard (and I don't purport to know what's best, having not been in the courtroom) it seems to me he ought to be found not guilty at this point. Still, the media is content with clinging onto and pointing out everything that could possibly be bad, and even in reporting prosecutorial and police misconduct it is done so in a "damnit, they're going to hurt our chances of getting this guy" manner. The worst is Court TV - I can't stand the woman with the southern accent who reports on the Peterson trial on that station in the first place, and she's particularly bad and biased in this case.
I'd love to not watch the stuff if it didn't make such great background noise.
Plus, I think it's important to be in touch with the kind of news most people are getting. It's hard to know how to reach people without understanding how they are being told to see things.