does this story seem biased?

tommangan · **Posted:** Sat Apr 19, 2003 10:11 am

click link hereThe story was written by a reporter who was a close friend of a woman battered by her husband, who is about to go on trial for her murder. It was in my paper so I'll suspend judgment.[ April 19, 2003: Message edited by: tom mangan ]

SusanV · **Posted:** Sat Apr 19, 2003 10:39 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by tom mangan:
[url=http:////http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5670987.htm]click link here[/url]The story was written by a reporter who was a close friend of a woman battered by her husband, who is about to go on trial for her murder. It was in my paper so I'll suspend judgment.<hr></blockquote>I'm getting a DNS error. Can you fix the link?

tommangan · **Posted:** Sat Apr 19, 2003 11:16 am

link fixed. sorry, shoulda checked.

rumymommy · **Joined:** Tue Aug 06, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 138

I clicked the link, but I was so turned off by the dandelion that zipped across the story and put an ad in the middle of the text that I didn't bother reading it.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Sun Apr 20, 2003 3:10 am

Questions and observations:1. Tom, you say the reporter was a friend of a beaten woman whose husband is going on trial for murder. You didn't mean the Petersons, did you? If the reporter was a friend of Laci Peterson, then there's a definite conflict here. If you were referring to a different case, then i guess we have to trust the reporter's professionalism. If that's not possible in this case, then the reporter shouldn't be on this story.2. Did this run in the paper as a sidebar to another Peterson story? Where in the paper? On the day the bodies were ID'd? Before or after husband's arrest?3. What was the point of this story supposed to be? That spousal abuse often goes unspoken or unnoticed is a valid point and worth a story. That Laci Peterson never mentioned abuse or appeared to be abused is a valid point, but belongs in a separate story. This story seems to hint that the husband is guilty because no signs of abuse existed.

4. Ours is increasingly a voyeuristic (and beyond that, "interactive") society. Not only is the public encouraged to write messages about events such as this crime, but we then report when someone who knows nothing about the case aside from news reports states her belief that she just knew all along that he did it. A serious story about spousal abuse is not the place for this.

tommangan · **Posted:** Sun Apr 20, 2003 11:48 am

Wayne: The story ran on 1A as a sidebar to the "woman's body identified, husband arrested" story. Last year one of our photographers, who was a close friend of this reporter, was found murdered --- shot in the head -- in the back seat of her car. It was one of those cases that wracked people with guilt, because it was known that her husband roughed her up sometmes but nobody did anything about it. IF memory serves, this reporter also wrote a long, anguished first-person story about the photographer and the warning signs that were not acted upon.

SusanV · **Posted:** Sun Apr 20, 2003 12:46 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by tom mangan:
Wayne: The story ran on 1A as a sidebar to the "woman's body identified, husband arrested" story.
<hr></blockquote>It should have been labeled commentary, or something similar.

bobvim · **Posted:** Tue Apr 22, 2003 11:19 pm

I didn't ready anything in the story that struck me as biased. It was a straight-forward story. In fact, it said some of the nicest things about Scott Peterson that I've read. I hope everyone is biased in terms of being against people who batter and kill other people. It doesn't seem to me that her experience would disqualify her from writing this type of story.

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Apr 23, 2003 9:48 am

I must be too brainwashed in that whole "innocent till proven guilty" thing because all this reporting -- essentially convicting the accused before the trial has even begun -- gives me the willies. But people are tried and convicted every day despite all the news coverage, so I guess I'm overreacting. I think about how easy it is for cops to get things wrong, for reporters to get things wrong, and how much worse things can get when both are working in tandem. More than once I've read a story and thought "I sure hope this guy's guilty."

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Wed Apr 23, 2003 4:09 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by tom mangan:
But people are tried and convicted every day despite all the news coverage, so I guess I'm overreacting.<hr></blockquote>you're not necessarily overreacting.

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