Surprise surprise... Daily Mail makes up Amanda Knox GUILTY story, including quotes

[Nottseagull]

anyone else notice the caption under the picture of all the media at the press briefing?.......

'media scum'. Very fitting!

 

[DTES]

For balance, we should probably also point out that (however briefly) the Sun, Guardian and Sky News also reported online either that they were guilty, or that the appeal had been turned down. Some of that may have been down to the nature of the verdict, where the judge started with her guilty verdict over libel.

What would be good is if we can see their 'guilty' reports. If they are without the made up quotes etc, then it would show us that the problem is the Daily Mail, and not journalism as a whole.

Sky News covered the verdict live. There were 4 charges - the first one was slander (or similar, or the Italian equivalent), and was the only one that Knox was (still) convicted of (the slander being wrongly blaming someone else for the murder). As soon as the judge said "Guilty" on this charge, Sky flashed up the headline "Breaking News: Knox Guilty", with the sub-headline "Knox fails in appeal" (or a very similar wording).

The Guardian's "live blog" made a similar mistake though (I believe, but can't be certain) the blog was written by someone who didn't speak Italian and so was watching Sky News's coverage.

I would imagine that the Daily Mail was doing the same, and hit the "publish" button the second they saw the headline on the live Sky coverage. Alternatively, if not, they made the very same mistake, and on hearing the word "guilty", didn't bother to wait for the other three charges and assumed it meant "guilty" on the murder charge.

I have no idea what happened with the Sun. I'd guess it was similar, but it would just be a guess.

It's a very silly mistake in all three cases (possibly four if the Sun was the same). However for me, the Mail's is the worst solely (as others have said) due to the made up quotes and events. If you want something for filler, that you're going to correct you just put 'Prosecutors said "[INSERT QUOTE HERE]" '. But even on top that, they made up Knox's reaction. It might well have been pretty close to how she would have reacted, but that's no defence.

The question is.... how many articles published in the Daily Mail have quotes and events completely made up, because the Mail know they'll be 'similar' so they can get away with it? How much in the Mail is reporting (however biased - their bias is another debate entirely), and how much is fiction?