JonBenet Ramsey: Tried in the Media

The General ideas found within high profile mediated criminal cases

• If war protests and rock concerts defined the American sixties, if sex parties characterized the seventies, and if monied affairs distinguished the eighties, then what was unfolding in Bolder tonight illustrated the very symbol of our national preoccupation with crime in the nineties. (2, Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography)
• In decades past, during high-profile criminal cases, the media and the public has mostly acted as observers of the legal system. They had stood back and respected the rules and often-tedious, time-consuming rituals of that system. They had seen themselves as one part—and not the most important part—of a significant social process. They had exercised self-control. By the mid-nineties, mostly as a result of the Simpson case, this had begun to change in ways that were corrosive and frightening, yet the change had been normalized to such a degree that it had hardly been noticed. (2, Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography)

But just as often the staccato of [the news] bolsters the status quo and a conservative agenda. Why? Because people tend to believe that the world was once more orderly and just, especially when today seems chaotic and disordered. (James Winter)

The Media blames the Parents
The Media make speculations on the motive
What Police Chief Tom Koby had to say
Other Comments
Return to Table of Contents