Mob mentality, media sin and response to Casey Anthony verdict

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Carol Forsloff - The Orlando Sentinel in Florida covered the case against Casey Anthony for three years, and that coverage has been bastardized with opinion arguments by other newspapers, bent on making judgments far too soon in a fashion that demoralizes the fabric of our justice system.

It is that tendency to create a mob mentality that is likely at the core of the media’s lingering demise and lack of public trust.  It is the tendency on all sides to make judgments before the facts are in.  This has been true in criminal cases and politics, where it’s the latest  sport to follow the popular view instead of the facts themselves.

Objectivity has been lost in many ways, from the Andy Weiner saga to the Casey Anthony case.  Weiner’s public career is ruined, his marriage likely frayed, and his personal life in disarray because the amount of media focus along with judgment made more melodrama than fact for entertainment.   The titillation about the sex itself was of far more consequence than understanding the nature of the behavior itself and how in many ways it has gripped so many folks.

In the Casey Anthony trial, and the background before it began, much of the media focused early on Casey’s alleged guilt.  The back story of how decisions are made for trial had little focus when the fun was in the description of an alleged baby killer, made worse by the fact that it was a mother accused of killing her child.

Public response reveals, however, that the truth is lost in the lie fostered early on, a lie that Casey Anthony was guilty of killing Caylee before the facts were known and sorted out by experts.  People took the sides that had been outlined by the media, reinforced by talking heads on television too.

Those who care for justice, and for the long-term welfare of the news and the true preservation of American values, hesitated to give their public views.  There were experts early on, like Kim Iannetta,  a behavioral profiler, who cautioned folks should wait and not crucify Casey Anthony, as was happening in the press.  Instead her analyses focused on the kind of behaviors that develop aberration in families and the learning we can derive from understanding those behaviors.   The courts, she pointed out, are the true places where decisions are made.

Decisions should also not be made by the press who have not been given the authority to establish one’s guilt or innocence, as occurs in a court of law.  It is not their Constitutional position.

When the decision was announced that Casey Anthony was found not guilty of killing two-year-old Caylee, the commentators issued their surprise and interviewed the people all around the courtroom who gave the same response.  Surprised they were, and we should not therefore be surprised when the truth about the law is lost in the maze of media  hype.  Those of us who focused on case elements to demonstrate how the system works were pummeled by page-view hounds who looked for ego strokes instead.

American justice outlines a process that may not always seem fair when folks don’t understand just what that process means.  In the case of Casey Anthony, the goal was to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  When doubt is reasonable, the legal innocence is fair.  The moral guilt or innocence has other judgment apart from human view, the pain and suffering that occurs in trials such as these.  It also comes in other ways we must now trust and remember as we do, that judgment always comes in its own way.

Media's ethical failures in Casey Anthony trial

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Carol Forsloff - A composite profile of events and behaviors helps the public understand a criminal case, but the methodology must involve careful presentation of events in a fashion that fosters innocent until proven guilty, even when the facts of a case are filled with emotion.  In that the media has failed.

The Casey Anthony trial is filled with media bias.  Much of the media present issues in a somewhat one-sided fashion, leaving the public not served by the objective data that needs to be known to be fair and to reinforce the principles of justice.  Nancy Grace, an articulate, intelligent and talented attorney, gives a night-time update on the Casey Anthony trial on HNL and gives good information.  But that information is consistently tinged by the view of someone who has personal experience with the impact of a violent crime.   She has spoken about how she works towards justice in the criminal arena because of the killing of her former fiancé. Her sidebar comments, questions and body language however,  support a bias of Casey Anthony’s guilt from the very beginning.

It is that tendency to speak from a personal view, along with armchair journalism itself, that has set a pattern of “guilty before being proven innocent,” which is an upside down commentary on American justice, that behavioral profilers are to reduce.  Those profilers, like Kim Iannetta, believe they should abide by the same ethics as the media in recognizing limitations and the presumption of innocence as well.

Criminal profiling comes from an examination of specific criteria, of behaviors that are complex but observable.  Kim Iannetta, a profiler who uses a combination of statement analysis and handwriting examination, has an extensive history working with the police, attorneys and mental health professionals in Hawaii, and other parts of the world, to assess the underlying factors in the behaviors of those found guilty or accused of violent crimes.

Recently Iannetta examined language behaviors of Cindy Anthony, the grandmother of Caylee Anthony, the tot killed in Florida, whose death is said by the prosecution in the case to have been caused by Casey Anthony, now on trial in a high profile case that is being watched worldwide.  Iannetta has also looked at the Anthony family and its dysfunction, a dysfunction that has deceit and manipulation at its core.  Iannetta’s analysis has been detailed in a previous article on this site, but her comments recently get to the core of the ethics in the field of behavioral profiling and how crime news should be reported as well..

“We need to remember this is a family in pain.  We also need to remember that we should not behave like gladiators watching people hurting in an arena, but use what we learn to help us in our own lives and families avoid the kind of lies and deceit that has brought the Anthony such agony, to have the daughter, Casey, standing trial  for first degree murder.  Facts are facts; emotions and judgment another.  The facts in language behavior support the parents, George and Cindy Anthony,  as having their own issues and patterns from which Casey may have learned similar ones.    For Cindy, the desire has been to look good; and much of her past and present behavior conforms to those notions.  She is a woman who focuses on the now, the present,  and who has a cold, distant relationship with her daughter that is observable in language behaviors."

That kind of assessment style is one many forensic experts use when addressing their findings.  They look at a constellation of factors and are more involved in how these show certain behaviors, and the predictability of them, with less focus on targeting an individual in some sidebar of self-righteousness that is tempting to experts and media folks alike.  “What we need to do is remember this is a family, that Casey may not be an evil person but one who may have a predisposition to pathology that a certain parenting style reinforced.”

To that end we can learn in the context of this case,  as Iannetta reminds us, not only the elements of the case itself but ethical standards.  Those are the ones that can make people less involved in the “sport” of crime watching, as played out in the halls outside the courtroom where Casey Anthony is being tried, and more empathetic viewers of human behaviors that often go terribly awry and to learn what creates these behaviors in our lives, communities and families."  It is the tendency to go beyond one's role as a profiler that Iannett says can negatively impact neutrality in a case, for either evidence experts or media personnel.

This speaks to the media’s presentation, and expert’s views as well.    Certainly crime stories do involve emotions that need to be described in detail, as they are played out before others.  On the other hand, selective reporting with opinion is a media style that opposes  presumption of innocence, as an Internet source points out.    According to ethics in reporting, as outlined in texts such as Writing and Reporting the News: a Coaching Method, there are principles of balance that are important when reporting sensational crime news.  To the extent the reporter can be objective, according to journalism instructors like the Coaching Method author, while writing with color and interest, the more the focus becomes on the elements of the case and the facets of the personalities involved.  When the verdict comes, the public can then respond in accordance with the facts, as closely as possible to what the jury finds.

That balance from experts and media sources is what the public looks to for a form of protection, as well as education, in the Casey Anthony trial, one where both media and experts have failed.