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Amanda Knox Verdict: How Did Newspapers Manage To Report Appeal Had Failed?

The Huffington Post UK   First Posted: 04/10/11 10:00 BST Updated: 04/10/11 10:08 BST

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Amanda Knox Verdict Sky News
Guilty: The moment Sky News reported the wrong verdict

Numerous newspaper organisations and even a television channel managed to misunderstand the Amanda Knox verdict and reported her appeal had failed.

“Breaking News: Amanda Knox loses appeal,” screamed the Sky News ticker as the verdict was read out on Monday night.

But they were not alone as The Mail Online and The Sun Online also managed to condemn Miss Knox to further incarceration.

“Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected,” reported the Daily Mail’s website with a picture of Knox looking, plain faced, at her lawyers.

The Sun said: “Amanda Knox is guilty of killing Meredith Kercher” while the Guardian’s live blog also fell in to the same trap before quickly correcting its error.

So what went wrong? According to the Daily Mail, which dedicated an entire box on page five of Tuesday’s paper to explain, it was all lost in translation.

“Using the word ‘guilty’ , the judge first upheld her conviction for slander – for falsely accusing bar owner Patrick Lumumba of carrying out the killing.”

The Daily Mail explained that the “guilty” word “caused some to initially think that her conviction for Meredith Kercher’s murder had been unheld.”

But what is more confusing is how an entire paragraph of quotes backing the “guilty” verdict managed to appear.

AFP’s Alex Ogle tweeted how the website had written: “Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice had been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail".

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Numerous newspaper organisations and even a television channel managed to misunderstand the Amanda Knox verdict and reported her appeal had failed. “Breaking News: Amanda Knox loses appeal,” sc...
Numerous newspaper organisations and even a television channel managed to misunderstand the Amanda Knox verdict and reported her appeal had failed. “Breaking News: Amanda Knox loses appeal,” sc...
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Patrick Garratt

Patrick Garratt: Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Two Names that Prove Capital Punishment has no Place in Humane Society

The Italian murder case that has gripped media in the UK, US and Italy for nearly half a decade took an incredible turn this week as Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, found guilty alongside Rudy Guede of killing Briton Meredith Kercher in 2007, had their convictions overturned. While the surreal scenes in and around the Perugia courthouse after the appeal decision resembled something out of a TV legal drama, replete with crowds hurling insults at lawyers and the stunned defendants being led through packs of suited men by the police, the chaotic case highlights again that miscarriages of justice do happen in the west, and that the lobby pressing for the resurrection of capital punishment in European nations should be held at bay.

 
 
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car1boy1e
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01:20 PM on 10/05/2011
I suspect none of these papers bothered to hire a translator and some fabricated quotes.
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Tim Haselden
An Enemy of Rupert Murdoch, since 1984.
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12:30 PM on 10/05/2011
Welcome to the traditional british tabloid bandwagon. One of the reasons, was the knox's PR team. When they arrived in the Uk a few months ago, their overbearing attitude and aggressive style grated & irritated, when one of the advisers was heard to remark "What is it with you people, it's not like she (meredith kercher) was even American." it offended nay insulted . They even managed to alienate the Mail & the Telegraph, (the two most pro US papers in the country)
Another , were the claims the knox defence team were coming out with. Deliberate tampering with testimony, obtaining statements under duress & shoddy evidence collection & presntation of "tainted" evidence as pure. I mean, we hadn't had that in the UK , since the dark days of the West Midlands Regional Crime squad. No One is THAT incompetent.
They jumped the gun because of a combination of the above. .
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Kimiko Austin-Rijs
American/European
596 Fans
03:59 PM on 10/04/2011
This wasn't a mistake, it was more like wishful thinking.
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