This article appears at <”http://truthinjustice.org/weinberg-report.htm”>. Steve Weinberg’s article makes for a long but worthwhile read in it’s entirety due to it’s significance in showing us the type of scrutiny our local media should be directing toward the investigation of the murder of attorney Greg Clark.
Two years have transpired and the police investigation appears to be at a standstill. Charges have not been filed and officials have not announced any findings of substantial evidence sufficient to proceed upon. Notwithstanding this, the police investigation and it’s accompanying media coverage have contributed significantly to a level of community outrage directed towards Richard Wanke, who so far is identified by police to be only “a person of interest” in the investigation.
In the opinion of more than one individual this attention has resulted in a six month detention of questionable legality for Richard, leading to an abbreviated sentencing hearing and the quick imposition of a much harsher 14 year prison sentence for a burglary conviction than he would otherwise have received. His situation is worth some critical scrutiny by our local media, but not one media individual (not even those supposedly critical of the inadequacy of the mainstream media coverage in community) has stepped forward to investigate how thoroughly the Greg Clark murder investigation has been conducted and the probability of Richard Wanke’s innocence in his death.
In Weinberg’s article:
“…I learned about Reasonover’s conviction after she had served 16 years in prison; after she managed to win the attention of a New Jersey private investigator with a letter difficult to write due to her limited education; after devoted lawyers agreed to file post-conviction motions based on the investigator’s shoe-leather inquiries; and after a courageous federal judge — a former Republican prosecutor — corrected the mistakes of the state courts…”
“…The Last of the Sacred Cows
The typical situation within newsrooms today looks like this: Coverage of criminal cases is spotty and often superficial when it occurs. Elected prosecutors tend to be treated as the last of the sacred cows, the white hats who keep the streets safe for law-abiding citizens. The lawyers hired by the elected prosecutor are rarely mentioned in print and even more rarely subjected to meaningful scrutiny, despite their considerable power. The police in general are not treated so sacredly by journalists. That said, almost all individual police officers operate anonymously as far as most journalists are concerned, allowing rogues to make questionable arrests with relative impunity…”
“…Even the cases that reach trial almost never receive the kind of journalistic scrutiny that could reveal a wrongful conviction in the making. Instead, reporters and editors handling trial coverage simply summarize what is occurring within the confines of the courtroom, rather than conducting an independent inquiry…”
“What Journalism Could Accomplish, If Only …”
_______________________________________________________________________ Examples of what our Rockford area journalists could be doing:
Per Wikipedia, “The Pantagraph is a daily newspaper that serves Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, along with 60 communities and eight counties in the Central Illinois area. Its headquarters are in Bloomington and is owned by Lee Enterprises. The newspaper has an estimated 107,000 daily readers...” The Pantagraph is a medium-sized IL newspaper, but the quality of it’s news reporting is generally better than larger community papers, such as the Rockford Register-Star. Pantagraph reporter Edith Brady-Lunny, explains the reasoning of the newspaper which led to her writing in detail about the Sheridan Correctional Center. It comes down to a dedication to investigating community issues that matter:“…The decision to write about Sheridan follows other prison-related stories The Pantagraph has done, including stories on the former death row facility in Pontiac and the women’s prison in Lincoln, Illinois. It’s the paper’s view that people sent to prison will one day return to and impact the community, and that, plus the large amount of taxpayer money involved, makes coverage of prison issues both relevant and important to our readers…”
http://thecrimereport.org/2010/03/29/story-behind-the-story-sheridan-correctional-center/ See the Pantagraph story here.
http://richardwanke.com/2010/01/25/the-new-type-of-journalism-that-makes-a-difference/
