Blake Fleetwood (Huffington Post) Media Blood Sport: “Snake”, “Ghoul”, “Prissy Perv”, “Wolf”. It became a game – a blood sport to be played for the greatest entertainment value. The public craves this stuff – the sexual abuse and murder of a blond child beauty queen – and has a pathological need to hate.
John Karr became the perfect media Piñata. Sell newspapers, get ratings. Who cares what it does to the justice system or the idea that suspects should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Here’s a fact. While the major media were turning this story into the BIGGEST THING in months, the most widely read people in the blogosphere — while not ignoring the story — were not nearly so preoccupied.
This happens again and again on the tabloidish tales that make TV people and the New York Post (and, sadly, the San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle, though to a somewhat lesser degree) go utterly berserk.
This isn’t to say bloggers’ collective focus is always the best one. What’s really scary is the utter shamelessness of major media right now.