Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Maybe it's just a really big country...
Between January 7 and January 9 of this year, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young couple in Tennesee, were the victims of a crime of staggering brutality. They were carjacked, abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered. They were victims of a crime so brutal it would shock the villain in an Eli Roth movie. They were victims of truly evil people, and I hope their killers receive the death penalty as soon as the state of Tennessee can arrange it.
What they are not victims of is a media cover-up. The idea that the media has no interest in this story has been making the rounds in various circles, but the idea, while attractive, just doesn't hold up to me.
When reporting on a crime, there are basically two interesting periods to the public at large. The first period starts when the crime is discovered, and runs until the suspects are caught. Once the bad guys are captured and the streets are safe, interest dies down until period two, which is the actual trial. (In capital cases, the run up to execution often serves as a third period of public interest.) Everything in between is important to the case, but there's a reason Law & Order condenses that part to about three minutes of screen time. It's not very exciting to watch. Newsom and Christian were last seen on a Saturday - Newsom's body was found on a Sunday - the suspects were arrested by the next Friday - not a very long period of time for the story to take hold. By the time word would have gotten out, the big news - the apprehension of the suspects - had already come and gone. Had Newsom and Christian remained missing, their fates and assailants unknown, it's likely the story would have been a huge national affair, what with Christian being a pretty young blonde. See Holloway, Natalie. There's a huge difference in covering a crime that has not been solved and covering one that has been - with the unsolved crime, greater coverage may help stir tips that lead to a resolution. But this case has apparently been solved, and developments in the case will involve status hearings, hearings on technical points of evidence, and other not terribly exciting details for the next year or so while both sides prepare for trial. These hearings are important steps necessary to bring the case to completion, but they've never gotten a ton of coverage. When was the last time your local newspaper ran a story on the Brian Nichols case, for instance?
The popular comparison for media coverage is to the Duke Lacrosse case, because the races of the accused and victims are inverted. This is considered the main difference driving the degree of coverage. But there's another difference that matters - in the Duke case, the DA actively sought out media coverage. He was either trying to drum up witnesses for an ongoing investigation (if you want to be charitable towards him), or exploiting the racial aspect of the case to help his re-election bid (if you don't.) Either way, he actively asked the media to cover his case. The authorities in Knoxville have not. Are the Knoxville authorities wrong for not acting enough like Mike Nifong?
And, while the details of this particular crime reach a level of horror that's almost impossible to comprehend, the truth is, in a country the size of the United States, people get murdered all the time without it becoming a story to anyone outside the town or city where it happened. According to the FBI, in 2004 there 16,137 murders in the United States, only a tiny fraction of which received any nationwide coverage. If you want to use only the most serious cases, in 2006 114 people were sentenced to death in the U.S., and there were certainly plenty of heinous crimes that didn't make that list of 114, because the defendant was either acquitted or received a sentence other than death. The hard truth is, murder, even at its most brutal, doesn't usually make headlines outside the area where it happened. Do Christian and Newsom deserve coverage otherwise given to Paris Hilton? Sure. But so does Cannie Bullock, an 8 year old girl who was raped and murdered back in 1979, but never received justice until recently, when advances in DNA testing allowed the state to identify Joseph Cordova as her killer. So does Stacy Payne, a 15 year old girl savagely raped and beaten by Roy Lee Ward. So does Kristy Vert, sexually assaulted and murdered in front of her grandchildren, allegedly by Sherhaun Brown. Vert's daughter in law was assaulted at the same time, her throat slashed and unsure if she will regain the ability to speak. So do countless other victims deserve to have their stories told. Heck, if paying more attention to celebrity stupidity makes one part of some liberal media blackout, I guess I need to admit my own culpability. The Newsom/Christian murders took place in January, and I remember reading the local stories when they happened. At almost exactly the same time, Paris Hilton has her little issue with California's traffic laws. Guess which story I wrote about first?
If there's a good reason for decent people to tell the story of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, it's to reclaim their names from the racists who think the problem is a lack of hate. Unfortunately, if you Google Newsom and Christian, you don't have to surf very long to get to white supremacist sites who have their own theories on the "media blackout." (No links. Trust me on this one.)
In the coming months, the defendants charged with the horrific murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom will slowly make their way towards a courtroom where they will finally be held to account. If there are any bumps on the road there, the local press will pick it up, and I'm sure if there's a reason for it to be a national story, it will be one. And while it goes on, other murder victims will die, and murderers will be arrested, tried, and sentenced without fanfare, because it doesn't fit into any media meta-narrative about race or sex or whatever it is we're supposed to be talking about that month. And while that goes on, different murder victims will die, and different murderers will be arrested, tried, and sentenced without fanfare, because those cases don't fit any counter-narrative. And while these murder victims will differ in age, sex, race, manner of death, they will all have one thing in common.
They'll all deserve better.
What they are not victims of is a media cover-up. The idea that the media has no interest in this story has been making the rounds in various circles, but the idea, while attractive, just doesn't hold up to me.
When reporting on a crime, there are basically two interesting periods to the public at large. The first period starts when the crime is discovered, and runs until the suspects are caught. Once the bad guys are captured and the streets are safe, interest dies down until period two, which is the actual trial. (In capital cases, the run up to execution often serves as a third period of public interest.) Everything in between is important to the case, but there's a reason Law & Order condenses that part to about three minutes of screen time. It's not very exciting to watch. Newsom and Christian were last seen on a Saturday - Newsom's body was found on a Sunday - the suspects were arrested by the next Friday - not a very long period of time for the story to take hold. By the time word would have gotten out, the big news - the apprehension of the suspects - had already come and gone. Had Newsom and Christian remained missing, their fates and assailants unknown, it's likely the story would have been a huge national affair, what with Christian being a pretty young blonde. See Holloway, Natalie. There's a huge difference in covering a crime that has not been solved and covering one that has been - with the unsolved crime, greater coverage may help stir tips that lead to a resolution. But this case has apparently been solved, and developments in the case will involve status hearings, hearings on technical points of evidence, and other not terribly exciting details for the next year or so while both sides prepare for trial. These hearings are important steps necessary to bring the case to completion, but they've never gotten a ton of coverage. When was the last time your local newspaper ran a story on the Brian Nichols case, for instance?
The popular comparison for media coverage is to the Duke Lacrosse case, because the races of the accused and victims are inverted. This is considered the main difference driving the degree of coverage. But there's another difference that matters - in the Duke case, the DA actively sought out media coverage. He was either trying to drum up witnesses for an ongoing investigation (if you want to be charitable towards him), or exploiting the racial aspect of the case to help his re-election bid (if you don't.) Either way, he actively asked the media to cover his case. The authorities in Knoxville have not. Are the Knoxville authorities wrong for not acting enough like Mike Nifong?
And, while the details of this particular crime reach a level of horror that's almost impossible to comprehend, the truth is, in a country the size of the United States, people get murdered all the time without it becoming a story to anyone outside the town or city where it happened. According to the FBI, in 2004 there 16,137 murders in the United States, only a tiny fraction of which received any nationwide coverage. If you want to use only the most serious cases, in 2006 114 people were sentenced to death in the U.S., and there were certainly plenty of heinous crimes that didn't make that list of 114, because the defendant was either acquitted or received a sentence other than death. The hard truth is, murder, even at its most brutal, doesn't usually make headlines outside the area where it happened. Do Christian and Newsom deserve coverage otherwise given to Paris Hilton? Sure. But so does Cannie Bullock, an 8 year old girl who was raped and murdered back in 1979, but never received justice until recently, when advances in DNA testing allowed the state to identify Joseph Cordova as her killer. So does Stacy Payne, a 15 year old girl savagely raped and beaten by Roy Lee Ward. So does Kristy Vert, sexually assaulted and murdered in front of her grandchildren, allegedly by Sherhaun Brown. Vert's daughter in law was assaulted at the same time, her throat slashed and unsure if she will regain the ability to speak. So do countless other victims deserve to have their stories told. Heck, if paying more attention to celebrity stupidity makes one part of some liberal media blackout, I guess I need to admit my own culpability. The Newsom/Christian murders took place in January, and I remember reading the local stories when they happened. At almost exactly the same time, Paris Hilton has her little issue with California's traffic laws. Guess which story I wrote about first?
If there's a good reason for decent people to tell the story of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, it's to reclaim their names from the racists who think the problem is a lack of hate. Unfortunately, if you Google Newsom and Christian, you don't have to surf very long to get to white supremacist sites who have their own theories on the "media blackout." (No links. Trust me on this one.)
In the coming months, the defendants charged with the horrific murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom will slowly make their way towards a courtroom where they will finally be held to account. If there are any bumps on the road there, the local press will pick it up, and I'm sure if there's a reason for it to be a national story, it will be one. And while it goes on, other murder victims will die, and murderers will be arrested, tried, and sentenced without fanfare, because it doesn't fit into any media meta-narrative about race or sex or whatever it is we're supposed to be talking about that month. And while that goes on, different murder victims will die, and different murderers will be arrested, tried, and sentenced without fanfare, because those cases don't fit any counter-narrative. And while these murder victims will differ in age, sex, race, manner of death, they will all have one thing in common.
They'll all deserve better.
