Newspaper editors will give anyone a blog these days. Provided of course you can string a sentence together, are openly supportive of global warming and have and/or are about to spew out a book. Journalists these days can encompass anything from the ‘I got a degree in journalism from the University of Blah so can I please, please have a job in journalism now?’ Types like Candace Dempsey. All the way through to the ‘established 18 year career with the New York Times and Pulitzer prize winning journalist’ type a la Timothy Egan.

Over time I have learnt to eat at and leave Candace’s table, not with anger or disappointment but a sense of passive nonchalance as if her outpourings of awkward grief and skewed logic are somehow to be expected. Despite her claims, Candace Dempsey is not an award winning journalist so the only real difference between her aggressive gushings at the Seattle PI and respected New York Times journalist come blogger Timothy Egan’s latest piece, is that the latter should know better. Especially when writing, with gusto, about the ‘obvious innocence and injustice’ done to fellow Seattleite and all round American golden-girl Amanda Knox.

Aside from the insipid title, what becomes immediately apparent when reading Egan’s article ‘An Innocent Abroad’ is not only the lack of objectivity (an essential tool for any self respecting journalist) but also the lack of any in depth discussion about the actual basis of the prosecution’s case, a case that has been presented in detail twice a week for nearly half a year.

Instead of discussing the factors leading to the arrest and trial of the defendants, Egan presents the old, clichéd and unsubstantiated ‘mad fanatical prosecutor’ theory as a reason for the trial. He muses:

“The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out months ago.”

My, my, feeling ethnocentric today aren’t we? Egan continues to bandy the ‘this would never happen in America’ claim and appoints himself, judge, jury and excuser in order to make the divine assertion that he and he alone knows what the outcome of this trial would be in the good old US of A! Egan is clearly suggesting to his readers that the conviction of Amanda Knox would be tantamount to a miscarriage of justice. Can anyone say objective reporting? Nope. Didn’t think so.

Egan fails to mention that Knox and Sollecito had many court hearings prior to the trial and were afforded many legal advantages and excellent legal representation. If even one of the judges who presided over the initial hearings had decided there was insufficient evidence to hold or charge them, they would have been released. Every single judge that heard the evidence suggesting their involvement in the murder denied their release.

It’s hardly as if they were at a disadvantage or even in the position to be railroaded. If I recall correctly Knox and Sollecito incriminated themselves long before the police even got a sniff of Rudy Guede, by repeatedly lying to police. Egan also fails to mention neither Knox nor Sollecito have an alibi for the night of the murder.

It seems Egan has opted to ‘pass’ on the option of providing his readers with an interesting and objective piece in favour of spending the last six months with his head buried in the sand or possibly with it firmly shoved up Douglas Preston backside, feeding off the gravy train controversy surrounding the ongoing trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for their part in the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

The victim is of course an afterthought. Egan gushes about Meredith being ‘high-spirited’ for about half a second before comparing how ‘high-spirited’ (what?) both girls were and explaining to the reader that we should essentially just forget all about Meredith and focus on poor, poor Amanda whom this case obviously revolves around:

“But it is also about Amanda Knox, an equally high-spirited student whose life has been nearly ruined by this collision of predatory journalism and slipshod prosecution – “the railroad job from hell,” as one outside expert hired by CBS News concluded.”

Does Egan mention the ‘outside expert’ is Paul Ciolino, whose thoughts and ideas about the case are on a par with a barely literate behemoth? Did I forget to mention the CBS expert was paid by, surprise, surprise CBS! To say *shock horror* whatever they told him to say! Oh Egan, you’ll need to do better than that to convince your readers.

The following statement is pretty misleading:

“Knox may not feel the same way. She spent nearly a year in jail without being charged. This, despite the fact that the only physical evidence found on the murder victim’s body was from someone else – a drifter with a drug problem named Rudy Guede.”

Knox and Sollecito spent a year in jail whilst the police built a case as they are legally entitled to do. The second statement is technically true but Egan fails to mention the fact that Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife discovered at Raffaele’s flat ,the victims DNA was later found on the tip. This is significant as Meredith had never been to Raffaele’s flat. Similarly, Raffaele’s DNA was found on the victim’s bra clasp, in a room he supposedly had never entered. Patrizia Stefanoni the DNA expert for the prosecution and a highly respected professional in her field has stated that these findings are not the result of contamination.

Equally telling:

“Knox and Sollecito were arrested in large part because of what they said under duress by interrogation of the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini. Remember that name. After being questioned all night without an attorney or a professional translator, Knox said some things in response to a series of hypothetical questions. This was initially trumpeted as a contradiction, or worst – a confession. A higher court later threw out the most damning statements.”

The lack of any mention of Knox being hit indicates that little myth at least has been put to bed (indicating that the FOA are no longer using the ‘she was hit’ excuse). Let’s put away a few of the others. Firstly Amanda was not questioned all night by Mignini and freely offered the police Patrick Lumumba’s name, she even made up details about how they had met and when they went to the cottage together. With regard to the ‘false confession’, Egan attempts to gloss over its significance to the case with what is perhaps my favourite euphemism (what’s yours?) in the whole post:

“Knox raised the possibility that a bar owner with an airtight alibi could have been involved.”

Only in the New York Times could a journalist get away with a whopper like that! You don’t ‘raise the possibility’ that someone was involved in a murder, you either accuse them or you don’t. If the subject weren’t so serious and the potential for misinforming the public so great I’d be howling with laughter.

Neither was this ‘confession’ made under duress. Amanda had gone to the police station and willingly offered the information to the police upon being told Raffaele was no longer providing her with an alibi. Mignini was only hauled out of bed at stupid o’clock in the morning once Amanda had made her ‘confession’ as her status had changed from that of a ‘person aware of the facts’ to a ‘suspect’. A translator was available throughout the questioning, she even testified in court.

Knox was certainly not questioned for 14 hours. She was offered refreshments and willingly signed a statement. A lawyer was not present and therefore this statement cannot be used against her. Egan conveniently forgets to mention a handwritten note Knox gave to police detailing her ‘confession’ explaining how she would ‘stand by’ her accusation of Patrick (that she knew was false) which, unlike her first statement, has not been thrown out of court and will be used as evidence in the slander case against her.

Egan further mentions (on details of Amanda’s sex life being leaked):

“The Brits, in particular, had a field day. Locked from her house in the first days after it became a crime scene, Knox went to a store one day with Sollecito to buy emergency underwear. The British tabs bannered this as a g-string celebration of remorseless killers.”

Emergency underwear that consists of a g-string and a camisole top? I don’t know about you but if my friend had just been murdered in the house we both shared and I’d been locked out whilst guys in white suits poked about in my room for days, I’d head on over to the nearest department store and get me a six pack of basic knickers until I figured out what I was going to do. While I was at it I’d probably pick up a t-shirt and a pair of shorts too. In fact what I definitely wouldn’t do is stroll on over to a lingerie store (and it was a lingerie store) and proceed to start snogging and dry humping my boyfriend in the middle of the shop (on CCTV of course) and talking about all the wild sex we were going to have later, in between eating and talking to the cops about the brutal sexual assault and murder of my friend.

Perhaps because I am British I find this a little rude. The Brits were certainly not the only papers to have published details about Amanda’s ‘Baby Brother’ rape story, the random sex with a stranger on a train and Amanda’s assertion that Daniel (from downstairs) would be a good shag because he had herpes. I agree that Amanda’s sex life really isn’t that important but the press were always going to try and find out this sort of information about her. It’s what the press do! Egan, as a journalist himself should know this and attempting to portray Amanda as a sweet and innocent ray of sunshine by criticising those who have uncovered evidence that she is in fact the opposite is a blatant attempt at shooting the messenger.

Some of you may be asking what the point of Egan’s article is, after all it sheds no new light on the ongoing trial or the evidence that has come out over the last few months, well , hidden under this plethora of regurgitated spaff is a badly disguised advert for Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi’s book ‘The Monster of Florence’, and as these little ‘promos’ often are, the result is a transparent book review written in extremely poor taste.

Has anyone noticed that whenever any criticism of the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito surfaces, the same name usually pops up? Often introduced by the synoptic tagline “the prominent best-selling American author Douglas Preston”. I don’t need to tell you that Douglas Preston couldn’t give a fig about Amanda Knox, indeed, the only linking factor between Preston and Amanda Knox’s  ‘plight’ is the presence of Giuliano Mignini. Preston harbours a particularly nasty grudge and uses his ‘experience’ of being questioned by Mignini to peddle his book. Can anyone say objective source material? Nope. Didn’t think so.

The truth is, if Mignini had nothing to do with this case then neither would Preston and the FOA would have nobody to scapegoat and blame for the supposed ‘railroad job from hell’. Any self respecting and competent Public Minister in any other Italian city would have constructed exactly the same case against Amanda and Raffaele. Mignini’s presence means nothing, yet without him the ‘mad raving prosecutor’ excuse falls apart and so does the FOA’s main line of defence. I expect it’s no coincidence that the PR campaign and Amanda’s defence are so at odds and I hardly think this constant trashing of the Italian legal system has done Amanda any favours.

Whilst people like Douglas Preston and  Anne Bremner keep bleating about the ‘backward’ Italian justice system , the Italians have presented a solid case. If people like Timothy Egan choose to cover it irresponsibly it’s up to them. Egan explains how ‘haunted’ he is by an observation made by his Times colleague in Rome:

“In Italy, the general assumption is that someone is guilty until proven innocent. Trials – in the press and in the courts – are more often about defending personal honor than establishing facts, which are easily manipulated.”

I too am haunted by this statement. Haunted by the apparent fact that Egan has based his entire article and understanding of the complex Italian legal system on the opinion and hearsay of another journalist.

The American media have made a monster out of this case, they have denied, ignored, manipulated and distorted almost every detail to suit their own agenda so why now do they complain when it comes back to bite them?