The latest in a long line of trials of the century

February 17, 2006

Here’s an odd question that I’ve never been able to figure out: how does the media decide which trials become the next Trial of the Century?

Celebrity trials I sort of understand. News outlets lose all sense of perspective, but reporters know that readers, for some reason, care about famous people who are on trial for something serious. Michael Jackson, OJ, Kobe Bryant, etc. all involved celebrities going to court and facing jail time. I didn’t care, but I see some reason for journalistic interest.

But what about people who aren’t famous? I can’t seem to avoid news about this Entwistle guy.

A Massachusetts judge ordered Neil Entwistle, the British man accused of killing his wife and baby daughter, held without bail on Thursday.

Entwistle, 27, did not speak during his five-minute appearance in Framingham District Court, entering his not guilty plea through his lawyer. He stood rigid and expressionless in court, with his dark eyes darting.

Rachel Entwistle’s parents attended the hearing, their faces etched with sorrow as they watched from the front row of the gallery.

This seems to follow that Peterson Patterson case from last year as the case to watch. I just don’t quite know why.

This is obviously a very sad situation, but as awful as the crime was, murder is not an uncommon crime in the United States. It’s tragic, but heinous crimes against spouses and children occur with some regularity. Why has the media decided that this case is more newsworthy than every other murder investigation?

And for that matter, how did the media decide? Was there a memo? Did the network execs get together and vote on which trial would become the next national obsession?

It’s all a matter of serendipity: whenever the news gets too “serious” for us rubes to handle (you know, things like Iraq, illegal spying, political cover-ups, fiscal insanity, Vice-President shoots a man in the face… for real, etc), the CCCP takes the next “missing blond woman” or “wife killed by husband” story that comes along, and voila, like magic, all the “serious” stuff disappears as the CCCP goes nuts over the relatively un-newsworthy. It’s part of the “news as entertainment” phenomenon, it’s relatively cheap to produce, and the idiots watching the idiot box all day eat it up. No wonder the F-word network does so well!

  • The daily show last night was brilliant on this. Stewart does his “signature” montage of Fox News talking idiots saying that the cheney thing was not important and that we should be discussing what really affects all Americans. Then he follows that with a montage of what appeared to be nonstop coverage on Fox News of this Entwistle guy getting off a plane.

    Too sad and funny to accurately describe in words…

  • I don’t own a TV. I occasionally watch CNN while I’m eating dinner in a local restaurant or I watch streaming video on the Web. The bottom line is that I’m not very well versed in these matters. The question I want to raise is: What is the Patterson case? Did you mean the Peterson case or do you mean the overlooked case of Alexis Patterson? I found the latter case when just now when I googled “Patterson case”.
    So CB, are you as ill informed on matters of popular culture as I am or was it a typo?

    On a meta-level you can see how the nation gets sidetracked.

  • So CB, are you as ill informed on matters of popular culture as I am or was it a typo?

    I’m going to go with c) both. It’s fixed now.

  • I’m as baffled as you are, CB. There are over
    15,000 homicides in the U.S. every year to
    choose from, far more than there are deaths
    from terrorism around the globe in a single year.
    For that matter, why are we focused almost
    exclusively on terrorism, then, as our biggest
    problem, by far?

    The O.J. case, although far over the top,
    was at least understandable in one sense.
    It was all about whether this obviously guilty
    man was going to beat the rap – analogous
    to whether this obviously criminal president
    of ours is going to get away with his
    multitude of atrocities. Of course, he will.

  • True crime cases that attract the media generally fall into these categories: (a) celebrities; (b) the “perfect couple” or “perfect family” where “something goes horribly wrong”; (c) serial killers; (d) beautiful young blonde white women who go missing.

    The media undoubtedly pick the stories with the greatest narrative value and personal appeal. And except for celebrity cases the stories are always about white people, both because the audience for this type of thing is largely white, and because true crime stories involving people of color become racially charged on a mass media level.

    Unlike political stories, the media like true crime because (a) the stories are clear-cut and uncomplicated, (b) they often carry a moral, and (c) they don’t rock the boat politically in any way: they’re dramatic, but safe. (Yes, the Condit case involved a politician and his missing intern, but remember how that story was separated completely from politics: no one knew where Gary Condit stood on any issues, and people would be hard-pressed now to say even what party he belonged to.)

    True crime used to be limited to tabloid newspapers and local TV news reports, but there seemed to be a huge upswelling of national interest in true crime after the end of the Cold War — perhaps because that overriding media narrative had ended and there was a need for a new narrative. We had Amy Fisher, Charles Stuart, Joel Rifkin, Jeffrey Dahmer in short order. Then, of course, OJ.

    More recently there’s been Laci Peterson, the BTK killer, Phil Spector, JonBenet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, etc. etc.

    The point is is that there is ALWAYS a true-crime flavor of the month. It’s not the exception; it’s the rule.

  • As other commenters have observed, it’s all about marketing. I haven’t seen any of the Entwhistle coverage, but I’d be willing to bet that he’s an attractive, youngish white guy with a charming British accent? Add that to the “perfect family with a dark secret” angle and you get something that viewers will eat up.

    I’m not sure that Analytical Liberal is being fair to call it a media conspiracy, though. I’m no economist, but it seems to me that the rules of capitalism dictate that the mass media must (or rationally should) cater to the widest possible revenue base, aka the lowest common denominator. The problem, therefore, lies in system that sets up the incentives for media coverage, and in the fact that the majority of media consumers are bloody idiots.

  • Analytical Liberal (#1) nailed it. “Hey, look over here!” is the standard carnie magician’s trick because it works on the lowest common denomenator, TV’s target audience. Alan’s (#2) illustration was perfect.

    It’s amazing how many of these issues were covered in Orwell’s little book, Animal Farm

    It’s actually part of brain physiology. The occipital lobe (nickel-sized control center for vision) is much, much more primitive than the parts of brain which handle speech and thought. TV wins every time.

  • It’s probably rather simple. Just hop over to the BBC website sometime, and choose the british edition to look at. Murder is pretty rare, and guns are even rarer, so when a crime happens with a gun, it makes big headlines. I am guessing that the American papers just picked up on the hype.

  • why oh why couldn’t cheney have shot the blonde milf ambassador with whom he’s supposedly having an affair instead of a 78yo man? even fox would be on it 24/7.

  • Everybody should really lighten up. People love these stories because well, people love these stories. Since Ancient Greece to Law and Order, people like mysteries and morality plays–preferably the fall of the high and mighty–all tied up on the hour with the verdict being announced. Why? Sometimes because the story plays to our deepest fears–something happening to our children because of their misjudgement, killing our spouse and children to be free of adult responsibility, committing the perfect crime of passion or greed and getting away with it. It is what it is, a great diversion at the very least, made all the sweeter when it’s a true tale. People today get all hung up about whether the story is about white or black people or some other tangential issue, but it has been thus throughout time and through every culture. No matter what is happening in the world politically, people are inevitably fascinated by a good story about guilt, innocence and the dark side of the human heart. The best stories are when “suddenly, something went terribly wrong.” Pass the popcorn and the lessons about hubris.

  • Helpless white women syndrome: peterson, run-away bride, Kobe. All the same. Helpless white women or that perception (in the case of the bride).

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