Media Log rides again!

Who gets DePetro's job?

Happy Trails

3 Comments

• Man Whos a Red Sox Fan said:

  Nobody's commenting on how WCRN is (apparently) going to be the Red Sox affiliate in Worcester next year. This could be a big improvement for Sox fans in Metrowest...neither WRKO nor WEEI put doodly-squat of a signal in that region, but WCRN already has a halfway-decent coverage of Metrowest. At least the western side of Metrowest. And supposedly WCRN will be getting that 50kW upgrade to night power any day now, which should mean a pretty solid Metrowest signal altogether. Of course, what's also cool about this is that WCRN is on 830AM and WEEI on 850AM. So if there's ever a game on WEEI, it'll be hard to miss it when you're spinning the dial (do any modern radios still do that?? :-)
  November 10, 2006 4:21 PM

• Paul@01852 said:

  Are there any plans to make this blog (or a summary) available via email? If so count me in
  November 10, 2006 10:20 PM

• Eric Goldscheider said:

  Here's a pitch for a story on how the media handled the Ben LaGuer case in the wake of the March 2002 DNA results. It would be timely now not only because the case got such huge play in the governor's race, but because it is going to the Supreme Judicial Court very soon. Oral arguments will be in early January. You could think of it as a continuation of Mark Jurkowitz's excellent 1996 article called "The Best PR Man Behind Bars". (You can read it at http://benlaguer.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/best_pr_man_behind_bars.html). That article didn't deal with questions of guilt or innocence but looked strictly at LaGuer's skills in getting heard. I know, through personal conversations, that Mark was one of the reporters who kept an open mind after the DNA test. The interesting thing is that in late 2001 many of the reporters following the case thought the DNA was going to set LaGuer free. Several scribes were already planning the celebration. When the DNA went the other way most journalists either dropped him or actively turned on him. There is a lesson there to be learned about the reflexive belief in scientific certainty. Absent any attempt to look behind the results to see how they were arrived at, that belief can quickly turn into dangerous groupthink. In the intervening years there has been a growing realization among the DNA expert community, acquired through case studies and a deeper understanding of the pitfalls, that DNA evidence is not foolproof. Yes, it is a very powerful forensic tool that can and will be put to good use by law enforcement. Yet, like anything else humans do, it is not immune from mistakes resulting from error, contamination and in some cases fraud. The best article about this is by UC Irvine Professor William Thompson in the Jan./Feb. 2006 issue of The Champion, the magazine of the National Association of the Criminal Defense Lawyers. (You can read it at http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/698c98dd101a846085256eb400500c01/6285f6867724e1e685257124006f9177?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,forensic,forensics,evidence). So far, four highly reputable DNA experts have studied the document trail in the LaGuer case and concluded that at the very least contamination can't be ruled out in this case. The press rushed to abandon LaGuer when the 2002 DNA result came in, but it has been very slow to look at, much less report on, these expert opinions. (You can read the letters at www.BenLaGuer.com). Now that the case is going to oral arguments in the Supreme Judicial Court this is an important part of the story that needs to be told. Most editors and reporters like counter intuitive stories. Is the idea that DNA can sometimes be wrong just too counter intuitive when it comes to this case?
  November 13, 2006 11:30 PM

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