Friday 22 July 2011

Casey Anthony: Once and For All

Admittedly, I am completely ignorant of the explicit details of this case. Being a journalism student, I should probably be ashamed--but shame does not change the fact.

I was never one to indulge in the excess of the media and their most often insignificant targets. I always found that the things the news glorified, even by demonizing, were never worth the attention. Casey Anthony's case is no different. Sad story? Yes. But worth years of airtime? No way.

Granted, I think we got hit extra hard by being in Orlando, but it was still too much of a story for my liking. And in the end, the verdict only helped to push it further along on the popularity scale--so much so that I already see a movie and possibly even a book coming out of it.

Well, here is my ignorant unbiased opinion: media hype is not supposed to get involved in the facts, or lack thereof, of a judicial case. No matter how many news anchors insinuate that she did it, or how many people interviewed were certain, it does not change the fact that there was little evidence to prove it. Even though many people may feel disgusted and outraged at the fact that she did not report her child missing for 31 days, that is not evidence that she committed the crime.

It is not what you know; it is what you can prove in court.

We can wail and scream and cuss about it from here until next year, but at the end of the day only Casey knows what happened to that little girl. And whether she spends the rest of her life in jail or not, the sad truth is that Caylee is still dead. No amount of demonizing her mother or criticising the judicial system will bring the little girl back. So what difference does it make? Our judgments have no significance in the grand scheme of life. People will always do what they want so long as they can get away with it. Just the same this may be an unfair ruling, I am sure there are dozens of people behind bars who don't deserve to be. People get locked up every day for using drugs, many of them spending years in jail for a decision they took which harms no one else but themself. (I mean if they want to snort the white stuff what does it matter to everyone else, or better yet, how does jail fix it?)

Millions of people are dying across the world from preventable and curable diseases. Little children are dying every day from malnutrition and dehydration by living in inhumane conditions. But these are not the things we wear out on the news. They are not as 'dramatic' and entertaining, I suppose.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?

In the end, the final judge of life, whoever it may be, will deal with Casey Anthony as he/she/it sees fit -- and that is really all we can hope for. In the meantime, we get to watch the monster we created as she uses her newly found fame to gain money from selling her story to writers and movie directors. Welcome to America.