JonBenet is back — or, at least, the “story that dominated the headlines when it happened and is doing so again tonight,” as Campbell Brown put it while leading off the NBC Nightly News yesterday.
The arrest in Thailand yesterday of a suspect in the 1996 murder of Ramsey — “a beautiful child,” said CBS’ Bob Schieffer, whose “story captured America’s heart and dominated the news for months” — led all three network newscasts last night. And with little fresh to go on, self-referential reporting dominated.
We begin with NBC, which was quick to credit its cable network, with Brown noting that “late this afternoon word first broke on MSNBC — a story that seemed to come out of nowhere.” (Actually, the Associated Press deserves credit for narrowly breaking the news yesterday.)
“It was a story that, as they say, had all of the elements,” said NBC’s Mike Taibbi, as JonBenet pranced and then danced on screen. “A pretty little girl with the melodic name JonBenet, a beauty pageant veteran already at age six, found strangled, possibly sexually abused and beaten to death in her own Boulder, Colorado home on the day after Christmas 10 years ago. Now, in Bangkok, Thailand, an arrest.”
Taibbi’s first source was none other than MSNBC’s Dan Abrams: “My understanding is that this is a suspect in connection with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Not a witness, not a peripheral player, but a suspect.”
The story then cut to file footage of John and Patsy Ramsey denying involvement in their daughter’s death, and on to more MSNBC footage of Abrams from that afternoon. “A sensational case that will now rule the headlines again,” concluded Taibbi, “perhaps for the beginning of the end of the story.” (No sense in precluding future coverage!)
CBS’ Schieffer, an iconic photo of the smiling girl over his shoulder, tossed the story to Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours. Moriarty, who has been on the case for years, reported the suspect’s name, John Karr (unlike NBC) — although it was misspelled on-screen with a “C.” “He is a second-grade schoolteacher who taught all over the world,” said Moriarty. “Law enforcement was led to Karr, sources say, because of a series of emails he allegedly sent revealing details about the case that were never made public.”
The report then cut to file footage of John and Patsy Ramsey from a 2004 48 Hours Moriarty interview — “the last network interview with JonBenet’s parents in which they denied, as they always have, any involvement in their daughter’s death.”
Saying “this is the cold case of all cold cases,” Schieffer asked about physical evidence during some back-and-forth chatter at segment’s end. “There’s always been unidentified male DNA that was found under the young girl’s fingernails,” Moriarty was able to report, adding that “the big question is will it match the suspect.”
CBS’ report turned out to be the best of the three. On ABC, Charles Gibson greeted viewers with the same iconic smiling photo of JonBenet over his shoulder. Senior legal correspondent Chris Cuomo began promisingly, reporting (according to several sources) that “the man arrested is John Mark Karr”: “ABC News has learned a 41-year-old U.S. citizen has been arrested in Thailand and is wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. ABC News has also learned that this suspect was previously charged in California in 2001 for possession of child pornography.”
But then Cuomo added that Karr “is expected to arrive back in the United States early this evening.” (Karr did not, making instead a juicy press conference appearance in Bangkok today.) And from there, Cuomo’s report segued into a lengthy recap of the previous developments in the Ramsey case which made for such “a media sensation” — lingering over file footage of John and Patsy Ramsey denying involvement in their daughter’s death under cross examination by ABC’s own Barbara Walters.
We’re all for media outlets examining their coverage — but shouldn’t that at least wait for the coverage itself to happen?
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.