LARRY KING - CABLE NEWS NETS RESUME JONBENET COVERAGE

CABLE NEWS NETS RESUME JONBENET COVERAGE

Cable news outlets, which dumped most of its other news coverage to go wall-to-wall in reporting the arrest of John Mark Karr in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, went all-out Monday to criticize authorities for getting the wrong man, after DNA tests disclosed that Karr was not the killer. The media also came in for criticism for doing little to check out Karr's background. Appearing on Larry King's CNN talk show Monday night, comedian/commentator Bill Maher said that the news media ought to have acted as "some sort of filter" and that some of the questions they might have tried to find answers to were: "How could he have done this? How could he have known about JonBenet Ramsey? They didn't care. They didn't want to look at that. They didn't because what they wanted to do was get back into the JonBenet story because that's good eyeball-grabbing stuff." Other commentators also agreed that if the video of JonBenet performing on stage had not existed, the story would never have attracted the kind of media attention it did.

29/08/2006