Editor’s note: This is a preview of a story that appears in the winter 2014 print edition of Gateway Journalism Review.
When Ryan Ferguson was released from prison Nov. 12 where he had been serving time for the murder of a newspaper sports editor, television journalists from across the country swooped down on Columbia, Mo., home of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.
The big story provided a teaching moment for one professor, concerned about accuracy, media ethics and the appearance of objectivity. A lesson was to be learned, too, about convergence, and how an event can be transformed or amplified by the various forms of media buzzing around it.
Ferguson’s release prompted live television coverage that showed reporters hugging members of his family, Internet postings and blog entries containing inaccuracies, and Twitter-fed debates over whether journalists should be cheerleaders. On national television, a network legal affairs correspondent misinterpreted a Missouri court opinion.
“I was appalled really at the media circus that went on after Ryan was released,” said Jim Robertson, managing editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune. “It just made me feel cynical about our profession.”
Ferguson spent nearly 10 years behind bars for the murder of Kent Heitholt, a Tribune sports editor who was found strangled and beaten in the newspaper’s parking lot on Nov. 1, 2001.
If Mr. Robertson wants to find the original source of the media circus
he need only gather with his Trib cohorts in front of a mirror. Had
they done their fallen colleague proud with investigative journalism
long ago we might already have
justice, not only for Ryan and Charles, but primarily for Kent
Heitholt. And instead of now spending time writing about Ferguson’s
release, how about using that ink to investigate and demand answers
about the actual murder? It’s late, but it’s not too late to start now.
And to Jim Robertson, your comments are a slap in the face to the Ferguson family, who spent 10 years trying to get their son out of prison for a crime he had nothing to do with. Thank goodness for reporters like Melanie Moon who stand up for what is right and actually covered this case accurately.
more than appalling. The local media and most specifically the CDT helped in these 2 wrongful convictions instead the media should be there to help prevent them. If they would have done any research and had an ounce of a critical eye, they would know the entire case against Ryan and Charles was such a joke and always was. It was all about wanting to solve a 2 year old unsolved case all too badly, so the media was just as responsible as the corrupt COMO PD and of course Kevin Crane. Disgusting, people need to wake up and realize the media for the most part is a joke. Robertson likes to think he is some great professional doing great things. What is worse than 2 boys going to prison for something they had nothing to do with. This can happen to anyone. When will people/politicians/media wake up and be real.
Something is very fishy about the entire handling of this case by the CDT. Boyd gets away without even being questioned formally and he was the last person to see Kent alive, and the CDT just blindly printed whatever the PD and Crane fed them. If you worked at the CDT and Kent was killed, why wouldn’t you want to know the truth??? What are they hiding and so afraid of???
I will not defend misquoting court opinions or dubious hugs, however I believe there is a far more interesting and important failure of the media in this case that is being ignored in the focus on such things.
As someone who has followed this case closely for a long time, I was really struck by this quote.
“I was appalled really at the media circus that went on after Ryan was released,” said Jim Robertson, managing editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune. “It just made me feel cynical about our profession.”
I’ll tell you what’s appalling: The strong anti-Ferguson tone of the local media coverage of this case, particularly in the Columbia Daily Tribune around the time of Ryan’s arrest through trial. Instead of doing whole the fourth estate thing that the media is supposed to do, they acted like a PR firm for Boone County law enforcement. Instead of independent investigation and reporting, the coverage consisted of unquestioning acceptance and repetition of everything they were told by police and prosecutors. The Tribune should have been in the prosecutor’s face with a microphone asking him tough questions about how his theory of the case did not jive with the evidence. Instead they were behind him, pom-poms and skirt, cheerleading as two innocent men were railroaded into serving prison sentences for a brutal murder they had nothing to do with.
So given that history, it is also appalling for Mr. Robertson to now cloak himself in the garb of responsible journalism and grouse about media circuses when his own paper created one that led to strong, local anti-Ferguson sentiment and convicted Ryan in the court of public opinion before his trial in a court of law had even started.
This study effectively illustrates the role the media can play in bringing about wrongful convictions with compliant coverage of law enforcement. It exactly what happened in Ryan Ferguson’s case.
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/02/19/study-shows-how-mob-journalism-helps-convict-the-innocent/