Sunday, April 1, 2012

In the Susan Powell case, the media has blood on its hands too

As the people who somehow have stumbled across this blog may have ascertained, I am no friend of the “mainstream” media. That includes the conceited, self-righteous folk at MSNBC, which I feel despite my left-leaning tendencies; I actually donated a token sum to the Obama campaign this year, believing that he’ll need all the help he can get to defeat whichever voter-fraud wins the Republican presidential nomination. The Trayvon Martin case, meanwhile, increasingly reminds me of the Duke lacrosse scandal, and I’ll have more to say about this in a day or two; among other things, I can’t wait to rip into Lawrence O’Donnell and the hypocritical blowholes who use the most tortured “logic” to distinguish between “race” and “ethnicity” just so that they can’t be accused of racism.

But there is another example of media mendacity I want to discuss. This past Saturday, the Tacoma News-Tribune’s front page blared in its usual supermarket tabloid fashion something about “new” revelations in the Susan Powell missing person case that question Utah officials’ actions. Although the totality of the activities of her husband, Josh Powell, in the days following her disappearance appear obviously damning in retrospect, taken individually there could be a “natural” explanation for them. But however convincing the evidence against Powell may seem now, Pierce County prosecutors had no case save working on the emotions of the public through the media. And with the aid of the media, that is exactly what they chose to do. Even though efforts to locate Susan Powell’s presumed remains last November in Utah that rekindled the story turned out to be fruitless, the presumption that there was a body to be found sparked renewed fascination by local news and print media. What was different for Josh Powell was that after nearly two years local officials decided to harass him even though it was highly unlikely that there was any “evidence” to be found concerning Susan Powell’s disappearance in his father’s house in Puyallup, where he had been living.

But it was merely a public relations stunt that the media was clamoring for, and its principle effect was to needlessly elevate Josh Powell’s out-to-get-me paranoia. What police found was mostly Steven Powell’s illicit interests; if you want to call them deviant, you might as well condemn half the adult population in this country; I read a report from a religious-based organization that a “shockingly” high percentage of people who call themselves “Christian” admitted to having an “addiction” to Internet porn. A 2003 study by Palisades Systems found that 42 percent of Internet searches on computers used by college students were “adult” in nature—as were 73 percent of films. Steven Powell, who is being charged with possession of said material, is attempting to have it suppressed since nothing the police found had anything to do with the intended “purpose” of their search warrant. But the principle consequence of the search was to use it as an excuse to remove Josh Powell’s sons out of his custody and give them to his obviously antagonistic in-laws. Was it probable that Powell saw this as an “unfair” assault on his rights? Of course. There was no evidence that the two boys were exposed to the “adult” content, or behaved in a sexually-suggestive way that implied that they were. On the other hand, the boys were alleged to have made unusual comments about Mormons; yet I have encountered many children who I regard as young fry of racists because of the surprising harshness of their prejudice against people of my “ethnicity.” Yet no one thinks that their parents are guilty of any crime against civilized society.

In order to retrieve his children, who he had good reason to suspect were being brainwashed against him—and supposedly beginning to “talk,” probably repeating scenarios suggested by Susan Powell’s parents—Josh Powell was ordered by the court to consent to a psychiatric evaluation, which he probably had good reason to believe was loaded against him regardless of how he responded to questions. I mean, how would the “normal” person (assuming that half the population isn’t “abnormal” or sexually “deviant”) confronted with embarrassing psychosexual questions attempt to explain it, or not be angered by strangers delving in their privacy that wasn’t hurting anyone, or was anyone’s business (except if they are moralizing televangelists or Republicans)? Would their evasiveness be deemed “suspicious?”

I’ve written about how KOMO TV ran a self-serving “expose” that had the effect of unjustly treating airport employees like potential terrorists, so I know that media pressure is real and tangible—and not always with the public interest in mind. There is no doubt in my mind that public officials were responding to media pressure that they had to do “something” about Josh Powell. This is not surprising in a state where “human trafficking” and “sexual slavery” is vastly overblown (we’ve talked about this before) would garner “bi-partisan” support in the state legislature, while real issues like adequately funding public services (like, say, mental health services) is constantly subject to deep cuts. Pressured by the media, public officials couldn’t allow such things as “due process” and the acquisition of evidence to interfere with harassing a man already teetering on the edge. Why couldn’t they wait until they quietly amassed sufficient evidence to arrest him, which had they worked with Utah authorities (instead of trying to hog all the credit for themselves) would have made such an eventuality more likely? After all, isn’t that how the media and law enforcement has been treating the Sky Metalwala case? I think most people, if they are asked, are fairly certain that his mother, Julie Biryukova—who was diagnosed with psychological peculiarities of a violent nature—knows exactly where he is, perhaps in a pre-fab grave in the woods or whisked away somewhere in the Ukraine by her father (who had a rather brief “visit” around the time Sky was last seen). Or is this police incompetence, or perhaps media loathing to accuse the mother? You tell me. I don’t think the media even cares what happened to Sky, because he is not a cute little white girl, and because his father is an unsympathetic Pakistani Muslim.

But back to the Powell case. The sudden, perhaps unexpected in his mind assault on Josh Powell that without doubt drove this man with a paranoid “victim” complex (regardless of his presumed guilt), had consequences that should have at least been contemplated by editorial boards. But the more salacious the story, the greater the viewership and newspaper sales. Profits and notoriety rather than rational thinking drives stories about cases like Powell’s, especially when the victim is an “attractive” white female. What was the price of this full-on media assault? The lives of two young boys, killed in a murder/suicide by their father who saw his world collapsing around him. He couldn’t fathom his boys growing-up in a household where they would learn to see him as an evil person. Had the media and public officials allowed due process to play itself out behind the scenes, justice would eventually have found Josh Powell, and his sons would still be alive.

It’s too bad that the media is equally as self-righteous in opposing income tax reform in this state, when state taxation inequality falls much harder on the poor and barely touches the rich--degrading educational opportunities, health care, and a vast array of public service programs that one would think that the rich would realize should be supported to maintain a civil society that essentially maintains their own status. Instead, sex and crime is the manna for the masses.

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