By Chris Powell
While local television news in Connecticut is usually trivial and patronizing, it isn’t always harmless. In recent days it has been creating a great danger with its coverage of the case of the 32-year-old man alleged to have been held prisoner since boyhood by his stepmother at their home in Waterbury.
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Last week TV stations were covering the story incessantly though there were no significant developments. The stepmother remained charged criminally and free on bond. But some TV coverage included interviews with people who proclaimed her guilt and denounced her though they had no original knowledge of the case.
It’s typical for local TV news reporters to stick a microphone in the faces of people having no original knowledge of what is being reported and to ask them for comment. These bystanders dutifully concur that awful events are awful, adding nothing to the story but sparing the reporter the trouble of finding someone who does have some original knowledge and is willing to talk.
Broadcasting such coverage day after day without adding new information is horribly defamatory and there may be no recovering from it. Last week the stepmother’s lawyer waxed indignant about it, complaining that it had already convicted his client in the public mind prior to the fair trial to which she is entitled.
If the case is not resolved by a plea bargain and goes to trial, the defendant’s lawyer almost certainly will request a change of venue from court in Waterbury. But there may be no place in the state where a court can find jurors who aren’t already prejudiced against the defendant. Such prejudice can drag out a case, weaken the prosecution, and facilitate a plea bargain more favorable to the defendant than a trial would be.
This doesn’t mean that sensational criminal cases shouldn’t get news coverage. It means that they shouldn’t get disproportionate coverage — that when there is nothing new to report, reiteration is unnecessary and unfair, just piling on, and that speculation on a defendant’s guilt should not be reported at all.
News is telling people what they don’t know, not what they have heard many times, and there is always plenty of important local news to report. Local TV news sometimes is capable of finding it, as WFSB-TV3 in Hartford did admirably last week as it disclosed the steadily worsening response times of the two ambulance companies serving Hartford, incompetence that may have led to the death of a child.
The Waterbury child abuse case may continue for a long time. Connecticut doesn’t need it to become the local equivalent of the death watch that 50 years ago national TV news maintained for months for Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, a death watch that went on so long that the first season of “Saturday Night Live” was able to parody it with great success on its “Weekend Update” segment: “Franco still dead.”
When the Waterbury stepmother goes to trial or enters a plea, it won’t be a secret. The prosecution and defense will have something new to say. Until then local TV news should try to find some news.
STILL FAILING ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: For many years women’s rights advocates and some state legislators in Connecticut have prattled about the state’s failure to take domestic violence seriously. State policy still considers court-issued “protective orders” to be adequate, though nearly every woman murdered by her former lover seems to die clutching one.
Connecticut still doesn’t realize that the only defense for women against domestic violence is speedy justice, though another proof of the necessity of speedy justice was apparent last week when a New London police officer was charged for the fourth time with harassing his former girlfriend and disregarding another useless protective order.
The officer was jailed only after his third arrest, and then only because he couldn’t make bond. Why didn’t he get a trial immediately after his first or second arrest? Women’s rights advocates and legislators should knock off the prattle and ask.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
Affirmative.
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