Another one of those good old media shamings has begun. Since the news came out yesterday that John M. Karr, who confessed to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, was being released from a Denver prison for lack of evidence, media critics have been breathing fire. His innocence has exposed the media madness that accompanied the initial arrest — including a description of the champagne, fried king prawns and roast duck he ate on his extradition flight out of Bangkok — as an extreme bit of jumping-the-gun. Howard Kurtz summed it up this morning, writing that “this was such a sham, from the opening moments, that it instantly goes down with the greatest media embarrassments in modern history.”
There were indicators twelve days ago when Karr’s arrest was first announced that should have alerted journalists and editors to be cautious with this story. On August 17, it was already known that his confession was full of holes. Karr said he had picked JonBenet up from school, but it was Christmas vacation when she was killed. He claimed to be Denver during that period, but his ex-wife swore he was with her in Alabama.
As one journalism professor told E&P that first day, “For now, there are questions about the suspect’s claim he was with the girl when she died. … The media might be better served to hold off on the breathless rush to pronouncements in this case, as we’ve seen in the past. Everyone is going to look pretty foolish if there is no solid evidence, such as DNA, to back up his claims of involvement.”
And boy do they now look foolish. But not before a paper no less venerable than the New York Times put thirteen reporters (you can count the names on the byline if you don’t believe us) on the story that first day. Not to mention broadcast news that, according to the weekly Tyndall Report, devoted more hours to the case last week than Iraq, or the foiled plot to blow up transatlantic flights, or the Israel-Lebanon conflict, or Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
No one wants to fess up now to the fact that it’s not just the Boulder D.A. who’s responsible for making this much bigger than it actually was. The Times story today starts like this: “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.”
Who were those “hordes” (to which, the Times itself, as we’ve seen, contributed more than its share) and how did they get there? Were they forced to report the story as if it were more important than Iraq or Iran, and not just some minor, possible breakthrough in a ten-year-old murder case? Did they just spontaneously appear, those hordes?
But we also want to ask a more fundamental question that our brother and sister media critics, curling their lips in admonition, are not asking today: What if Karr was guilty? The criticism today is all focused on the mistake reporters made in not being skeptical enough of this guy. No one is bothering to ask whether this story was worth covering to begin with.
There is no doubt that the country is interested in this sordid tale. And a newspaper does have a responsibility to answer that curiosity. But on the front page? At the top of a news broadcast? If Karr’s arrest and extradition were on the back pages, we’d have no room to complain. But the prominence this story was given is what tips it over the edge.
The answers for why we care are also not particularly flattering. Is there some prurient satisfaction we get out of endlessly rehashing a story about a 6-year-old who was sexualized when she was alive, dressed up to look like a moving doll? And what about the figure of Karr himself? He was also irresistible — a character out of a horror movie with that wide, blank blue-eyed stare, delicate features, skeletal body. He was the guy the scared camper with the flashlight bumps into moments before being strangled to death in the zombie films. He seemed to be the perfect character to complete this bizarre story. So why not just put his mug on the front page?
The media cannot exculpate itself. It was one of the forces that blew air into this story until it was too big for anyone to ignore. But we need to ask why. And not just why John M. Karr was not better examined before he was convicted, but why this is considered worthy of such placement and attention to begin with. Human curiosity — the perverted kind or not — as well as the draw of a good narrative are always factors in what news makes it to the top. And it will always be thus. But when these become the sole elements pushing a story, things get dangerous. The coverage begins to resemble a driver-less car going at 80 miles an hour, where the only way to stop is to crash.
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.