<p>In my local community, a man beat his wife to death over supposed infidelity. Today, the local newspaper printed his written confession in its graphic entirety, after several days of stories about the wife’s alleged infidelity. I find this so deeply disturbing and don’t recall ever seeing anything like this before. I grant that I may just be ignorant, but why would a confession be printed before a trial, or at all? Where is the respect for the children who were in the house when the murder occurred and who found the body? Is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed?</p>
<p>What do you all think? Is this a case of my needing to grow up or is this journalistically questionable?</p>
<p>Agree. It sells newspapers. I wonder why the police or DA’s office released this statement prior to trial as it is highly prejudicial & make it too difficult to seat an impartial jury.</p>
<p>As an aside, if the confession was obtained prior to trial from the prosecution side, then the defense lawyers are likely to move to get the confession excluded from evidence.</p>
<p>There has always been a split among newspapers as to sensationalist journalism (also called “yellow journalism”) versus researched and fact-checked articles. Yellow journalism sells; you need only look at the horrible photograph on the subway platform that the New York Post (well known for its sensationalist tack on the news) published just a few days ago. </p>
<p>I think the kind of article you describe is horrifying, and I sincerely hope you’ve cancelled your subscription and written to the editor, but the fact is that newspapers are under the gun financially to increase circulation, and editors will publish what they think sells. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.</p>
<p>Never heard of that one. Maybe our resident lawyers can chime in, but printing his confession seems really wrong and really stupid to me. What happens when he retracts the confession and demands a jury trial? How will they ever find an unbiased jury that didn’t read his confession? Well, maybe it won’t be that hard to find 9 people who can’t read, or don’t read the paper, but still…</p>
<p>What bothers me is how the local news here picks up every horrible, twisted, kinky perverted story from all over the country and spews it out as “news”. Most of these stories would hardly be news if they occurred in my backyard, but to see this stuff that happened 5 states away is ludicrous and a poor excuse for journalism.</p>
<p>As an additional note, I did a google search of the news using the terms “murder suspect confession” and was intrigued to notice how consistently the same newspapers showed up: the New York Daily News, Fox News…</p>
<p>dmd77, it was the Staten Island Advance, which is totally middle of the road and generally not sensational. But you make a good point. Fox sleazes from the right and the Daily News sleazes from the left. Although the subway photo was at the Post.</p>
<p>I hadn’t written a letter or cancelled my subscription yet (this happened today), because I wanted to see if my perception was off. Seems I’m not off the wall to be bothered by this.</p>
<p>I don’t think your perception is off at all, zoosermom. I’m appalled at some of the ‘news’ that gets published. I would be curious to know how a newspaper got hold of his confession.</p>
<p>It is not just the so-called sleazy tabloids. The LA Times has published some very gory photos on the front page. The contractors hung from a bridge in Iraq and others that shocked me given that that is what is prominent on news stands and boxes. The Times is in bankruptcy.</p>
<p>That kind of stock in trade has been with the tabloids for a long time, the Daily News and NY Post have for many, many years published things of questionable taste. Back in the day the Daily News had a photographer called Weegee who used to take all kinds of sordid pictures, mob rubouts, etc, just like the case you are talking about. It is yellow journalism, but it sells papers. BTW the NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the person who created and owns Fox News, they are basically mirrors of each other.</p>