Monday 3 October 2011

Daily Fail publish the story they wanted about Amanda Knox

At 8:50pm the Daily Fail published the news from Perugia. Only it wasn't the news that all the rest of us were seeing.


In what appears to have been a pre-written story ready to go live when the verdict was give the Daily Mail is unique in not actually reporting the news. As events were happening on the 24 hour rolling news the Fail decided to print the following (I'm fisking in red)


Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman also ruled that Raffaele Sollecito, 27, Knox's former boyfriend, should remain in jail and confirmed the original 25-year sentence on the computer studies graduate.
Making up the verdict of a judge, isn't that contempt of court?
As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.
There were no seats everyone, including Amanda was standing. She did slump but into her sister's arms.
A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.
Of course it was the defence team who were saying that Justice had been done. But that we mustn't forget Meredith whose young live had been ruined in such a voilent way.

So someone at the Daily Fail had written the News before it had happened. Someone had published it when this wasn't what was happening. The Daily Fail have shown that they don't care about facts, in fact they will write the story that they want. Nick Pisa whose byline is on this piece is no more than a writer of fiction, not a very good foreteller of the future and a poor excuse for a journalist, but then look at the excuse of a newspaper that he works for.

Update The page has since been taken down. But I have screen prints of the entire article.

4 comments:

  1. And you expected journalism and reporting?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I suspect they had a guilty article pre-prepared and a not guilty article pre-prepared and publishing one was a big mistake

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's as may be Gavin but they had quotes assigned to individuals and painted a courtroom drama that I and millions of others didn't actually witness.

    It wasn't a straight forward Guilty storyline and reporting on the fact of the final exchanges in court before the Jury and Judge withdrew. It was making up the statements of the judge and the prosecution team. Oh and publishing them minutes before the news actually was announced looking at the time stamp.

    ReplyDelete