Get a load of this recent article from the Dallas Morning News:

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DNA testing reaffirms guilt of two convicted sex offenders

Monday, January 14, 2008
From Staff Reports

DNA test results have reaffirmed the guilt of two convicted sex offenders, the Dallas County district attorney's office said Monday.

"Misidentification was never a factor in either of these cases because the victims knew their attackers personally prior to the assault in both instances," said District Attorney Craig Watkins in a news release.

Victor Dwyane Jackson was convicted in 1990 and received a life sentence for sexually assaulting the maternal grandmother of his son.

Larry Charles Drake was convicted in 2000 and received a nine-year sentence for sexually assaulting his girlfriend's then 13-year-old daughter.

The testing and reaffirmation comes as part of the Innocence Project of Texas' efforts to review more than 400 cases where inmates have filed applications for DNA testing under Texas law. Some of those tests have resulted in more than a dozen exonerations in Dallas County.

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Did you miss it in your local media? Maybe you blinked.

Now, compare that article to any story about DNA evidence exculpating a defendant. Care to guess the word count ratio of one vs. the other? I'm guessing it'd be about 5:1, minimum. Or how about the placement of the story in the local fishwrap? You get my drift.

My question is: Why? Is it as simple as the fact that good news -- i.e., the criminal justice system worked and got the right guy -- doesn't sell or is not of interest to the public?

What do you think?

When I was a reporter, there was a fairly predominant sentiment that, with regard to the government, 'tis better to be seen as a junkyard dog than a lap dog.

It would be difficult to dismiss out of hand the idea that an agenda is at work here, but I'll leave that commentary to wiser and more eloquent commentators.

I caught the article on the Smurfs' 50th Anniversary, but I didn't see the one on DNA being used to reaffirm convictions.

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My question is: Why? Is it as simple as the fact that good news -- i.e., the criminal justice system worked and got the right guy -- doesn't sell or is not of interest to the public?

What do you think?

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I think the assumption would be that it is not as newsworthy because that is exactly the result the system is intended to produce. It is the aberrant case--the 1 in a 1,000,000--in which the wrong result is reached, for whatever reason, that is truly newsworthy. Fortunately, I think advances in technology help us avoid, and will continue to help us avoid, many of the mistakes made in the past.

Maybe society simply has no interest in "rightful" (sic) imprisonment cases. Society, does however, have an intriguing interest in "wrongful" imprisonment cases.

Just this week, the Golden Globes gave best picture to Atonement. A movie about an individual who was falsely accused. Other falsely accused movies include: Sweeney Todd, Shawshank Redemption, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Green Mile, To Kill a Mockingbird... etc. There aren't many movies, and probably there isn't much public desire for one, where the State did its job to perfection and now the bad-guy is properly withering away in prison.

Maybe we can change that... the script writers are on strike...

Have to disagree slightly...in that I think people do have an interest in justice served correctly--Law and Order has been on tv for a LONG TIME. And on any random Sunday you can view a number of Lifetime movies about rapists brought to justice, or kidnappers caught and baby happily returned, etc. (Not that I'm a prosecutor that watches Lifetime movies, of course, I've just heard of them.)

I had a reporter come to my office and ask about whether I would release DWI stats during a time when an office had been crucified in the press for the number of DWIs that had been dismissed or sat dormant. He was very friendly and told me that he wanted to do a multi-issue look into the issue of DWIs, etc.--sort of a community awareness type article. I gave him everything I had, answered every question he put to me, and even offered the dispo summaries generated for my office's own information on our cases. I'm not sure he ever even picked them up. Low and behold....no article appeared, much less a multi-issue in-depth look at how solid our stats were. Clearly, he (or his chain of command) felt that good stats were not news-worthy (but seemed from our conversations to genuinely think the issue was important), but I rarely meet any new community members that don't have numerous questions about the justice system.

Moral is...I think it's a matter of the mode of delivery, not a societal lack of interest.

I agree. The trial process is heavily glamorized and a focus of the media. Law and order is a trial show. Fracture was trial movie.

My earlier post, however, was about imprisonment. A Motion for DNA testing is a post-convition motion and post-conviction hearings usually only get publicity if there is a reversal. There is hardly ever any coverage for someone who is correctly serving their time after trial (maybe serial killers).

There's a play called the Exonerated.

There's not a play called the Rightfully Convicted.

I nearly fell off my elliptical when this ran on the 6 o'clock news in Dallas. Sorry, Shannon it did make the most competitive time slot.

That's encouraging, Ray.

This issue has puzzled me for years. I once spoke to a UT class on media and politics about the death penalty, and we spent almost the entire time debating my statement that "the mainstream media does not think executing guilty people is newsworthy." It was a lively debate, but one without resolution.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scott Brumley:
When I was a reporter, there was a fairly predominant sentiment that, with regard to the government, 'tis better to be seen as a junkyard dog than a lap dog.

[QUOTE]

YOU were a reporter? Egads! We're gonna have to talk, Scottie...

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Society, does however, have an intriguing interest in "wrongful" imprisonment cases.

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Of course it does. The system is designed this way from the ground up... and it goes way back.

Remember the old Blackstone ratio:
"better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer"

People take this kind of thing to heart... at least until they or their kin are victimized.

In Williamson County, we have prosecuted several inmates for lying in their writs, claiming they were innocent when objective, unchallengeable evidence showed their guilt. In each case, the inmates were convicted of aggravated perjury and given stacked sentences to go with the ones they were already serving.

I thought the media would find it newsworthy that inmates were manipulating the system to try and get out when they were guilty, guilty, guilty. But, the only story they wanted to pursue was to question why anyone would want to prosecute such lies, because, hey, we all know that inmates lie, right?

This reinforced that a substantial part of the media do not find it newsworthy (or perhaps consistent with their world view) to report the proper enforcement of the law. The result, as Shannon suggests, is that a disproportionate number of stories run reporting the improper enforcement of the law. All done, I believe, with the intent to create an impression of a systemwide problem rather than an isolated mistake.

The disproportionality rises if the mistake involves an issue, like the death penalty, that the media disfavors.

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All done, I believe, with the intent to create an impression of a systemwide problem rather than an isolated mistake.

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You migth be over-analyzing it. We only see news about the weather on tropical islands during a hurricane. Nobody wants to hear about another beautiful day in Tobago. A newsworthy event is out of the ordinary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog_(journalism)