PlayerRep said:
Of course, no arrests/accusations would stop the stories, because there would be nothing to have a story on. But, in my view, the next biggest factor is/was Florio. She almost single handledly pushed the sexual assault stuff. Without Florio, JJ would not have had front page stories dozens and dozens of times. Her stories are written with more old news and bias, than those of any other reporter. Go talk to some of the other former or current reporters and people at the Missoulian. Many don't like Florio. At least some will back up what I'm saying.
It's not necessarily a question of covering something; it's where the story is placed in the paper, the headline used, and what is put in and left out of the story. On the other hand, there are some little things, like minor procedural "developments" for minor things (like disorderly conduct), shouldn't be covered at all. Florio more than others used these minor developments to write the same stories over and over again.
It really was something. I've never before seen a daily newspaper that pretended to be objective take such a strongly biased position, and doing so by reprinting the same shaky allegations over and over again.
And the bias was palpable in the many Freudian slips ... and you can imagine the corrections they were continually making ..."Jordan Johnson pleaded guilty today to charges of ... OOOPS, we mean, Beau Donaldson .... oh, and follow the coverage on Twitter at #UMRape .... OOOPS, we mean, "UMTrial" ... and gee here's our story today about egriz and it's "testosterone soaked" culture, with all of the expert opinions by somebody who probably never read it at the YWCA but who is a friend of mine who will give the quotes that I need for this story and who is also going to give me an award for outstanding advocacy writing in news stories."
The Twitter feeds were just special. Bink's testimony: "she is so special and she would never lie to me about anything, and no she didn't tell me she was breaking her date with me that night because she had Jordan Johnson coming over and she was going to invite him into her bedroom and close the door and watch her favorite movie about a high school girl that lies about having sex. She told me she had to study. Something. Something big. It was very important she said, and I believed every word she said, and she didn't even have the courtesy to let me know afterwards that she dumped me as fast as a bag of rotten potatoes when she got the chance to watch that movie in her bedroom with Jordan Johnson. And in fact, NOBODY told me and I didn't even realize it, until Mr. Paoli asked me, that she dumped me on the same evening that she had Jordan Johnson over to her house and had lied to me about it."
Missoulian Twitter feed: "Bink said she was his best friend and he cried on the stand because of all she was going through."
I mean, wow, talk about leaving out pertinent "details" of cross-examination.
And that happened over and over again during the trial. A reader of the Missoulian Tweets would have had no idea that every single State witness was practically speaking demolished during their testimony because Florio invariably left out any key testimony or questioning that reflected badly on the prosecution case. It was overt.
And that is the failure of the
Missoulian as a journalistic enterprise. If an honest reader had relied solely on the Missoulian and on Florio/Devlin, they
could not have understood the outcome of the trial; the not-guilty verdict.
The newspaper not only failed in its ultimate mission, to inform, it became something else, something shameful in Journalism, a public relations machine for a politicized point of view; adopting a policy to specifically misinform, now intent on misleading and damaging people, processes, and polarizing a small society in the name of that personal agenda.
And make no mistake; Florio and Devlin thought this could be prize winning stuff; expose' material; the unmasking of a shameful subculture of athletes and sexual misconduct. If it required the destruction of ordinary standards of honesty, if it required destroying a young man's life to get their Pulitzer, they were fully prepared to do it. Indeed, they consciously chose to be part of it; part of the "information stream" that biased the jury pool, that drove public opinion, that outraged innocent readers who did not understand their motive of personal greed for awards and recognition, and if it involved twisting "the news" into a libel machine constantly repeating every allegation as though true, and constantly failing to print contrary and inconvenient facts, they were fully willing to do that.
They were an old fashioned Southern lynch mob, caring little for process or justice, brandishing pens instead of ropes.