12 November, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Just a follow-up to my recent post on bias in the British media. I had to laugh when I saw this headline. The papers just can’t help themselves. How is the fact that Amanda Knox is American even relevant to this story? I can understand that her national identity will come up in the coverage of the case, but why is it the persistent focus? It seems like a childish reaction on the part of the press. It’s as if all of Britain has been wronged by this American — and by extension, all Americans somehow had a hand in creating this monster before she was unleashed on the innocent people of Europe.
There are at least two (possibly three) other people involved in this murder of a British student, one of them an African immigrant, but even the potential explosiveness of that cannot take the focus away from Amanda Knox, the media obsession. I’ve noticed many stories in the press here about young British women who have gone abroad and have ended up savagely murdered. Two women who went to Japan to teach English were killed in horrific fashion and there are other stories. I wonder if any British men who travel abroad are ever killed? I have no idea. Men being killed is not as interesting, since when a woman is killed, there’s often some kind of sexual component. We all the know the media gets off on that.
The coverage of these stories disturbs me. Implicit in these stories is a warning that young women who seek adventure and travel are risking their lives and should just stay home, as if we are living in Victorian times. Thus, any woman who does go abroad and ends up raped and/or killed has just brought this fate upon herself. Even worse, there is always a judgment made about the female victim. In this case, Meredith Kercher (the victim) has been judged by the media to be a “good girl” — thus, she didn’t deserve to be sexually tortured and stabbed to death. What if Meredith had consented to this orgy — would her death be any less tragic? No it wouldn’t, but the media coverage would be drastically different. She wouldn’t be “our Meredith,” a representation of all that is good and pure about British womanhood. She’d just be cheap slut who got what was coming to her.
Initial reports stated that there was evidence that Meredith had had consensual sex before her death. Her father was outraged at these reports. The Italian judge hoped to settle this matter by stating in her report that Meredith was “morally pure.” It’s bad enough that this poor girl was raped, beaten and murdered. Now her moral character and sex life are a matter of debate for the people of England and Italy. I’ve been present at dinners where people have debated this heatedly.
What makes this case even more interesting is the fact that one of the alleged perpetrators is female. And unlike Meredith, who is good, Amanda Knox (aka Foxy Knoxy) is as slutty as they come. Her MySpace page features provocative photos of herself, she posted short stories she wrote about a woman who is drugged and raped, she apparently brought strange men home to the flat all the time for sex and is a raging nympho. So we have a compare/contrast here that the media loves — the madonna and the whore. Amanda’s friends from back home in Seattle claim she isn’t a slut, that they never saw that side of her. So once again, a woman’s moral character is up for debate.
Because of this dynamic, it’s not surprising that the media has latched onto Amanda Knox. They could not have made up a character better than this. I’m not surprised that this has happened, but it does surprise me that they are obsessed with the fact that she is American and that they are relishing in this in such a blatant way. It’s so subliminal, I bet many people don’t even notice it. I guess the double whammy of having a female sex fiend as the perpetrator who is also American is just too exciting to bear.
By writing about this bias towards Knox, I don’t mean to imply that I feel any sympathy for her or any kinship with her because she’s American. Far from it. Her nationality is irrelevant to me. If she took part in this crime as described, she should spend the rest of her life in prison. Lock her up and throw away the key. I just think that on many levels, this case highlights many ugly biases that simmer below the surface, not just about Americans (which is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things) but more importantly, about women.
Tags: Amanda Knox, Meredith Kercher
Anglofille said @ 4:24 pm | feminism, news & politics |
- Comments RSS | TrackBack URI
-
“Implicit in these stories is a warning that young women who seek adventure and travel are risking their lives and should just stay home”
Oooh, yes, this drives me bonkers! They never cover stories about guys that way!
-
Rebecca Says:
November 12th, 2007 at 7:07 pmI don’t know about you, but last week I was walking down the street and *thought* about maybe going to Paris, and some pervert groped me. God help me if I actually *traveled* there!! Surely I would be raped!
-
Gregory Says:
November 13th, 2007 at 3:36 amI found her white blog-mates a bit hard to take, I pity the poor Times journalists who had to try to talk them. Have you been reading the Seattlepi blogs, my goodness, they are so vomitably precious.
“There is also no reason for the (London) Times reporter to e-mail Amanda’s friends, including myself, for interviews. I dislike the notion of him tracking down my e-mail from links on Amanda’s Facebook profile.”
Soccer Moms on cack if you ask me.
G.
-
Gregory Says:
November 13th, 2007 at 3:44 am“Meredith Kercher (the victim) has been judged by the media to be a “good girl” — thus, she didn’t deserve to be sexually tortured and stabbed to death. What if Meredith had consented to this orgy”
She didn’t, that is just you being quite offensive, as indeed other Americans have been.
Ms Kercher died because of the Seattle version of Karla Homolka.
Hope that helps
G.
-
No, it’s not me being offensive. You clearly don’t understand the points I am making here. Trying reading my post again.
-
To be honest, I think the media have made the Congolese man at the centre of the investigation their whipping boy. The English media is obsessed with immigration at the moment - you can’t watch the news or pick up a paper these days without an immigration story. This particular case seems to be presented in the usual black and white moralistic way that always occurs. Black African immigrant = murderer and rapist. I find that particularly offensive.
I haven’t noticed the girl’s nationality as being particularly highlighted by the press - but then it could be that(although it sounds obvious) the fact that you are American is more likely to have pricked your ears because the girl is American (just as is the case with the murdered girl, who unless she was English, probably would never have made the covers of papers here in the first place). I certainly don’t think there is a subliminal bias in the media against Americans - perhaps in 2003, but not so much now.
I do agree with you about the virgin-whore dichotomy. Whenever a young teenage girl goes missing in this country she is always presented as pure and morally good, as though the general public couldn’t possibly stomach or be interested in a story that involved a young girl who might have been sexually active. It seems unpalatable to middle England. There was a great arcticle, I think in the Guardian a few years ago, that presented a year’s worth of missing person’s cases, and that those cases that involved a girl who had questionable ‘purity’ were not taken up by the media at all, whereas girls with guaranteed virginity and purity made front covers.
What you have to remember here is that the media is run by white middle class heterosexual males, and that taken as a whole the media is intrinsically misogynistic. Even the way some female newsreaders are dressed to present the news has nothing to do with professional news presentation, and perhaps more with male producers requesting more makeup, more cleavage and more pouting. Such a sad reality, illustrated most pertinently (as you mentioned in a previous) that ‘tabloids’ still print topless pictures of women - in 2007?
-
Interesting that you see the African immigrant as being the main media target. Under normal circumstances, he’d probably be the *only* media target, but having Knox involved does (in my opinion) take a lot of the focus off him.
I should look up that Guardian article you mentioned. I think the same attitudes prevail in America as well, don’t get me wrong. I also think the American media is horribly misogynistic and biased too. I guess the difference for me is that the media here is much more tabloid-driven and these tabloids are so vile, on the one hand containing porn, then on the other hand judging women who don’t fit some Victorian model of femininity. It never ceases to astound me.
-
‘tabloids are so vile’ - I couldn’t agree more. They should not be called newspapers. The fact that they are still in circulation says a lot about how unenlightened we are in 2007. These newspapers propagate misogyny, despite claims we live in an near egalitarian society. Interesting comments though, and food for thought! Glad to see you made the Plath symposium. I was supposed to be there, but was unfortunately ill. Looked extremely interesting - I mainly wanted to hear Al Alvarez. How wonderful you met one of Plath’s old school friends!!
-
Gregory Says:
November 14th, 2007 at 12:07 amI probably just don’t understand what you were trying to say.
So, would it be like all of America, including the media, pretending the female inmates at Abu Ghraib were in a different place and were not yards away from the scenes in those terrible photographs?
Only for the US media to eventually brand the identified victims as ‘prostitutes’ because that was easier to swallow rather than explain that Iraqi police officers were abducting girls and trading a few with US soldiers?
That did work in America.
But not always, If we put forward a comparison with say the the Maury Travis victims, of ‘bad’ girls being tortured and murdered.
I think they were adopted, as human beings, who were sisters, daughters, and who didn’t deserve to die or to be involved in a serial sex killer’s pornographic ambitions.
The recorded homicide material was eventually released as a snuff porn item because of American police officers.
The British media want to portray Amanda Knox as a slut killer. It helps the media if the victim is above reproach.
G.
-
Gregory Says:
November 14th, 2007 at 4:13 am“Black African immigrant = murderer and rapist. I find that particularly offensive.”
It goes two ways.
He is Congolese so he is guilty & he is Congolese so he has to be innocent. Two competing sets of sterotypical prejudices arm-wrestling in the Italian press.
The media outside of italy were of a view that his bar was remarkably, in the boo-koo of clientele sense, clearly not Piccadilly Circus,
at least to the extent that one could find a customer, .. and this perhaps goes without saying, he really needed to vet his part-time staff a little better.
-
Anna Says:
November 15th, 2007 at 3:31 amI’m a student at the U of W in Seattle, about a quarter mile from her former dormitory. What’s strange is that, though the story has made headlines, it is hardly as popular in conversation here than you make it seem overseas.
But I could never see the point of tuna and sweet corn...
