Final research paper with a sample paper to refer.

Student 2

Random Student

Prof Urie.

English 1213 – 101

28 November 2018

Undue Process: The Media’s Influence of a Jury

On the morning of December 9, 2001, Michael Peterson made a phone call to police alerting them that he had found his wife in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase in their home. Upon investigation, authorities determined that the vast amount of blood provided reason to believe foul play had resulted in Kathleen Peterson’s death. A medical examination concluded that lacerations on the back of her head were the result of blunt force trauma. Michael Peterson, a Vietnam veteran turned novelist, became the sole suspect and was arrested on charges of murder. A local celebrity in the Durham, North Carolina area, Mr. Peterson’s case garnered ample attention from local, national, and even international media outlets. In their article “Prime Suspect: The influence of local television news of the viewing public” Franklin Gilliam and Shanto Iyengar examine how modern media, which is centered around the generation of competitive ratings, manipulate coverage of legal cases and distort the public’s ability to attain an objective viewpoint. In the case of Michael Peterson, it did not take long for the media to dig up information on his personal life that made for a much more tantalizing story. An analysis of coverage around the case will show the media’s agenda of creating a “crime script.” Using psychological principles, the media manipulated Michael Peterson’s case to weave together a story of sex, money, and violence worthy of the television entrenched public. However, by broadcasting and enhancing this story for the year and a half it took between the time the death to verdict, the pool of peers whom would determine Michael Peterson’s fate would be tainted. By sensationalizing personal aspects of Michael Peterson’s life, the media predisposed the jury pool to a guilty verdict.

To understand the templates the media used while covering this case, it is important to understand what is meant by “crime script.” After synthesizing the viewpoints of multiple psychologists, Gilliam and Iyengar define a script as “a coherent sequence of events expected by the individual, involving him either as a participant or an observer” (561). Scripts, by their nature “facilitate comprehension and knowledge” and allow the viewer to make assumptions about future happenings (Gilliam and Iyengar 561). For instance, were a viewer to see two men standing in a ring while both men wear boxing gloves, and a referee holds high one of their hands, one might assume a boxing match had just taken place and the man with the elevated hand was the winner. Gilliam and Iyengar contend that “script-based expectations are so well developed that when people encounter incomplete versions of the script, they actually ‘fill in’ the missing information” (561). After defining a suspect, the general crime script consists of three primary elements: Violence, money, and sex. Because the mass populace is so saturated by advertisement and media it is believed that “for viewers in Los Angeles and across the country, the expectations prompted by the crime script have achieved the status of common knowledge” (Gilliam and Iyengar 561). Just as one might see the glove raising of a boxing match and know what has transpired, one might also look at murder coverage and think one knows the truth. In the case of Michael Peterson, the script answered the story long before the verdict did.

Hours after the body of Kathleen Peterson had been discovered, local news stations in Durham, North Carolina were on the move to report the story. In a piece by The News & Observer titled “Kathleen Peterson, wife of mayoral candidate found dead,” writer Angela Bible relays the initial information. The opening sentence coyly creates a suspect by painting a picture of Michael Peterson rather than his late wife: “The wife of Michael Peterson, who ran unsuccessfully for Durham’s City Council this fall, was found dead early Sunday” (Bible). Michael Peterson’s potential involvement in the death was not known by the reporter though his persona is clearly related: “Details about what happened Sunday morning remain sketchy…because police have not yet interviewed Peterson, who was spending time with family” (Bible). After interviewing a neighbor who gives a depiction of Kathleen and the life she lived, the article concludes by again depicting Michael as the man who “lost Durham’s mayor race in 1999 after admitting that for years he had falsely claimed he sustained a permanent injury to his right leg from combat in Vietnam, when it actually happened in a car crash” (Bible). Using this brief information about Michael Peterson to open and end her article, the reporter has likely manipulated the reader with exploitation of a psychological principle psychologists call the serial-position effect. Authors of Psychology: Perspectives and Connections, Gregory Feist and Erika Rosenberg define the serial-position effect as being “[t]he tendency to have better recall for items in a list according to their position in the list” (272). In other words, people are “better able to recall [things] at the beginning and end of the list; they tend to forget the items in the middle” (Feist and Rosenberg 272). Though Mrs. Bible uses an interview which actually pertains to the victim, it is shadowed by the information that brackets it: Michael Peterson is a liar as has been clearly shown in the past.

Eleven days following the first article, The News & Observer released a piece titled “Michael Peterson Indicted: Accidental death of wife unlikely, medical examiner says” authored by Demorris Lee and Aisling Swift. The use of information to elicit the serial-position effect is abundantly obvious here. The piece’s first sentence includes the character description necessary for the script: “novelist, columnist and former mayoral candidate Michael Peterson” (Lee and Swift). Information about Peterson’s defense is peppered throughout the middle of the article along with reminders that “he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1999 vowing to crack down on crime” (Lee and Swift). But the information that bookends the article and pointedly directs the audience toward the notion of Michael Peterson’s involvement in his wife’s death is much more suited for the classic crime script. When mentioning evidence confiscated from the Peterson residence, ample attention is paid to the “used condom, bloody hair…a knife” and “semen from Kathleen Peterson’s bed” (Lee and Swift). The sexual inference is doubled down on when it continues that “[t]hey also confiscated three computers, a paperweight, condoms and other items” (Lee and Swift). Potential murder weapons are apparently speculated upon here by mentioning the knife and paper weight among the condoms which add a marketable element of sex to the story. Though none of these details had any bearing on the rest of the case, the lurid imagery was used to help the reader better identify the crime script. In their book Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media, Richard L. Fox et al. write, “the tabloid nature of contemporary coverage may actually result in higher levels of public misinformation” and the “priorities of the legal system, such as justice and fairness, become secondary to the press’s interest in attracting large audiences by presenting titillating images and compelling, personality-centered plots” (7).

The story of Michael Peterson picked up steam throughout the next year, and as the case geared up for trial, the media took advantage of the lengthy time frame to create a much juicier story for the ever-hungry public. In an article for People Magazine from 12 August 2002, authors Patrick Rogers and Lori Rozsa take advantage of Peterson’s amplified image as a novelist. They pose the question, “did her novelist husband, Michael, script a cunning murder” (Rogers and Rozsa 89). Again, this depiction of Michael Peterson is used, and now it is being compounded with the notion that his storytelling ability makes him more capable of staging his wife’s death. Beyond reporting the views of Prosecutor Jim Harden that “[t]his was not an accident. There is no question” (qtd. in Rogers and Rozsa 89) and questioning Michael’s motive, the focus of this particular article seems to be over the Peterson’s wealth. Emphasis is paid to the Peterson’s residence “valued at $1.8 million” and “the stress of [Kathleen’s] $150,000-a-year job” (Rogers and Rozsa 89). It expands on the wealth of Michael Peterson when informing that he “faces life in prison and is out on $850,000 bond” (Rogers and Rozsa 89). Of course, no article would be complete without a solid closing piece of information: Peterson’s “close friend, Elizabeth Ratliff, 42, who was living near [the Peterson’s] in Germany when she died of a brain hemorrhage in 1985…was found at the foot of a staircase” (Rogers and Rozsa 89). It infers that the wealthy have been given the opportunity to walk free and unnoticed after committing crimes. Peeling back the curtains of Peterson’s life and selecting tidbits that make for an evocative story “convince[s] consumers that the symbolic reality presented in the media is an accurate reflection of objective social conditions” (Fox et al. 8). The revelation of Elizabeth Ratliff’s ’85 death provided the media with even more ammo for creating a story that would bolster ratings and taint the public view of Michael Peter long before his trial.

The story began exploding on the national news circuit. Coincidentally, another murder case was happening on the opposite coast of the U.S. involving Scott and Laci Peterson. The similarities were not unnoticed by the media. In a piece titled “Coincidental Deaths?” released 19 May 2003, CBS reporter Rome Neal opens with “[o]nce again, a seemingly perfect marriage is under the microscope, and prosecutors say things may not be as perfect as they appeared” (Neal). The potential for the serial-position effect error is quite clear as this was how Neal began his article. The parallel between the two cases is just too easy not to point out. The relevance of the Scott and Laci Peterson case is nil but “[c]rime dominates other news because its emphasis on vivid pictures and emotional personal accounts is believed to attract viewers” (Gilliam and Iyengar 572). Neal quickly turns his attention toward the body of Elizabeth Ratliff which authorities had recently exhumed, eighteen years after her death, to conduct another autopsy which found “she, too, was beaten to death” (Neal). Neal attempts to show both sides of the coin by mentioning that Michael Peterson has “taken care of Ratliff’s two daughters ever since” and they “continue to believe Mike Peterson” (Neal). It is noteworthy that this article was written approximately a year and a half after the death of Kathleen Peterson, yet “the case is still in jury selection” and “it will not be known whether the death of Elizabeth Ratliff will be admissible” (Neal). For months the media has been sensationalizing and speculating over information that has not been deemed admissible for the jury. But, with the jury still unselected, and this information so prominent, it becomes difficult to believe that the pool of potential jurors was not exposed before the trial took place.

It is no surprise that the tragic story of Michael Peterson and his wife Kathleen made its way over to spotlight national news broadcasts. A national broadcast by CNN’s Anderson Cooper titled “North Carolina Writer Charged with Wife’s Murder” begins by making an interesting opening claim that a novelist was “accused of killing his wife to cash in for her life insurance, a little bit over $1 million” (Cooper). The element of money bolsters a crime script, but this motive seems fabricated as previous reports have already listed the value of their home well over $1 million. Cooper uses visceral words to describe Kathleen’s wounds. He quotes prosecutor Jim Harden in saying that “[t]here were at least eight or nine huge tearing laceration wounds” (qtd. in Cooper). He later explains Elizabeth Ratliff’s wounds as being “several head gashes” (Cooper). Well versed in his use of rhetorical devices, Coopers uses words such as “tearing” and “gashes” to inspire an emotional reaction in his viewers and add pathos to his piece. The piece continues with Cooper addressing the Purple Heart that Michael Peterson had received and how he had lied about its origins. Then, when interviewing Tom Gasparoli of The Herald Sun, Cooper raises another issue meant to erode Peterson’s character: Peterson’s alleged bisexuality. Gasparoli, who took Peterson’s position at the newspaper, says “the issues of whether he has been bisexual or homosexual during his marriage or prior to his marriage…[will] contribute to a pattern of lies” by Mr. Peterson (qtd. in Cooper). Though this information has still yet to be deemed admissible to a jury in court, Gasparoli contends that “the jury will look at forensics and not be sure and they may look at his [personal] life and say, ‘I don’t know if I believe anything he says’” (qtd. in Cooper). This is a method of leading the audience called priming. As defined by Richard Fox et al. “‘priming’ refers to the idea that when citizens think about people in the news, they will consider individuals in light of the issues and topics covered in the news” (9) The foremost contributors to national news have gerrymandered through the bullet points of Michael Peterson’s life in order to generate the story containing the most tantalizing elements regardless of whether or not those elements are pertinent for the audience or the case. Unfortunately, “[t]he commercial realities of our time dictate that local news will continue to cultivate misperceptions and prejudice” (Gilliam and Iyengar 572).

By the time the jury had finally reached a verdict, and the story had reached the national and international newspapers, it hardly reflected its initial reporting. In an article for The Independent titled “Vietnam Hero Turned Novelist Convicted of Beating His Wife to Death with a Poker,” author Rupert Cornwell synthesizes the personal aspects of this story into a demonizing personal characterization. Neither the first claim of the article about the similarities between Ratliff and Peterson’s death, nor the last assertion regarding Michael’s disingenuous claims regarding his Purple Heart had any relevantly factual basis toward this case. He describes Peterson as a “celebrity” and mentions that “his clothes were covered in blood” when authorities had arrived at the residence (Cornwell). This rang particularly false considering much deliberation and debate had gone into the fact that only mere blood splatters were found inside his shorts and no blood was found on his shirt. The piece goes on to rehash the importance of Elizabeth Ratliff to the case: “the outcome may have hinged on a previous event in Germany – the 1985 death of Elizabeth Ratliff” (Cornwell). Though the trial had concluded and Peterson had been found guilty by this time, The Independent did mention the fact that though “the novelist was never charged with the earlier death in Germany, and no motive was advanced for the killing of Mrs. Ratliff, the prosecution was allowed to present evidence about it in trial” (Cornwell). The article speculates on other potential motives such as Peterson murdering his wife to collect on her life insurance policy valued at less than their residence, and “the writer might have killed his wife in a drunken quarrel after she discovered his double life” based on his “exchanging homosexual e-mails” with “a male escort” (Cornwell). Richard Fox et al. condemn this sort of journalism when he writes “a great deal of legal news has become a vehicle for entertainment, rather than for public education or for the reporting of breaking events with real public meaning” (6). The real issue is that this sort of reporting had been going on throughout the two years it took for a verdict to be reached. The community and nation were bombarded with “sensational evidence and lurid speculation on Court TV” long before the “three-month trial – the longest of its kind in Durham’s history” had even begun (Cornwell). In their efforts to create a memorable story for the public and “in deciding what ‘news’ is, the most self-serving activities and goals of the mass media themselves become nearly as determinative as the actual real-world events that they cover” (Fox et al. 11). It would have been virtually impossible for the pool of jury members and judge to remain ignorant to this mass amount of information being promoted by the media and, in turn, impossible for them not to formulate bias toward the information.

Many critics might make the argument that the media cannot be held responsible for the verdict of the jury as they were simply playing their role as watchdogs and following the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Code of Ethics.” However, the information regarding Elizabeth Ratliff and Mr. Peterson’s bisexual tendencies were massively speculated on well before this information had been made admissible for the jury, and, for that matter, well before jury selection had begun. This notion does not dissolve the fact that fundamental psychological principles such as the serial-position effect were exploited by loading the opening and closing of articles with speculation instead of fact. On multiple occasions, the media creates outright falsehoods which contradict the clause of the “Code of Ethics” stating to “[n]ever deliberately distort facts or context” (SPJ). Others might suggest that judge Orlando Houston, who presided over the Peterson case, should receive the blame for the personal and prejudicial information he allowed in the court. As has been previously stated, this information was abundantly available via the media well before the jury selection process had ever begun. It is also not beyond the bounds of possible thought to consider the judge felt pressured to allow the evidence solely because of the mass attention it was garnering from media outlets. The judge did speak on these matters in 2017 after Peterson was released from prison, saying “you can see how with time and more examination of the evidence that did come in, how maybe it wasn’t without prejudice” (“Flawed Justice”). He continues, saying that if he had gotten the chance to do it again, “there were things that I would have changed…The introduction of the death in Germany was very prejudicial to the defendant” and “[Houston] thought that all the homosexual evidence, however it was used, would have been unduly prejudicial to the defense and probably should not come into evidence” (“Flawed Justice”). Judge Orlando Houston concludes his interview by saying, “I think I could have had reasonable doubt” (“Flawed Justice”). The effect of the media’s reporting of this case was not without prejudice. Rarely did journalists “[s]upport the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant” as outlined by the “Code of Ethics” (SPJ). The reporting was almost exclusively centered around Michael Peterson’s personal history. The media used their power and voice to set an agenda, and “the agenda-setting function of the media helps determine what citizens perceive as the most important issues of the day” (Fox et al. 9).

  The journalistic coverage of Michael Peterson’s case routinely followed a crime script which, according to the scientific evidence collected by Franklin Gilliam and Shanto Iyengar, “reveal that the crime script generates strong expectations about crime, allowing viewers to fill in gaps in the script. Lacking concrete evidence about the perpetrator, viewers infer what must have happened” (564). A capitalistic system that allows media to be controlled by for-profit private bodies will lead to news coverage that is not without bias or a hidden agenda. The media has the power to dictate the newsworthiness of a story based on their perception of its entertainment value. According to Fox et al. “‘entertainment value’ is now a central feature in the determination of newsworthiness, as news outlets find themselves in an increasingly more competitive struggle for viewers, readers, and listeners” (11,12). All media outlets, whether they be national or local, maintain goals which find their roots in meeting a corporate bottom line. It is because of this necessity to create stories that will bring in viewers, and the psychological functions employed within journalistic coverage that the media had a large impact in predisposing Michael Peterson’s jury toward a guilty verdict. Their influence upon the workings of the criminal justice system must be addressed and measures of responsibility must be taken to ensure that all peoples are given due process of a fair trial. A value shift is in order for Western Civilization in which immediate gratification and entertainment comes second to ethicality and morality.

Works Consulted

Bible, Angela. “Kathleen Peterson, Wife of Durham Mayoral Candidate, Found Dead.” The News & Observer, 10 December 2001, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article208068159.html

Cooper, Anderson. “North Carolina Writer Charged with Wife’s Murder.” CNN, 3 July 2003, Time Warner Company, transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/03/se.06.html.

Cornwell, Rupert. “Vietnam Hero Turned Novelist Convicted of Beating His Wife to Death with a Poker.” The Independent, 11 October 2003, Independent News and Media, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/vietnam-hero-turned-novelist-convicted-of-beating-his-wife-to-death-with-a-poker-5546705.html.

Feist, Gregory J. Rosenberg, Erika L. Psychology: Perspectives and Connections, 4th edition, New York, New Yok, McGraw-Hill Education, 2019, https://newconnect.mheducation.com/flow/connect.html

“Flawed Justice.” The Staircase. Directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Netflix, 2018.

Fox, Richard L. et al. Tabloid Justice: Criminal Justice in an Age of Media Frenzy. 2nd Edition, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007, www.rienner.com/uploads/47d9507ee3854.pdf.

Gilliam, Franklin D. and Shanto Iyengar. “Prime Suspect: The Influence of Local Television News of the Viewing Public.” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 44, No. 3, July 2000, pp. 560-573, published by Midwest Political Science Association, bb.tulsacc.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_6854390_1&course_id=_91136994_1.

Lee, Demorris and Aisling Swift. “Michael Peterson Indicted: Accidental death of wife unlikely, medical examiner says.” The News and Observer, 21 December 2001, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article213198834.html.

Neal, Rome. “Coincidental Deaths.” CBS, 19 May, 2003, www.cbsnews.com/news/coincidental-deaths/.

“Officials to Exhume Peterson Friend”. Plainview Daily Herald, 14 Feb. 2003, Hearst Newspapers, www.mrt.com/news/article/Officials-to-exhume-Peterson-friend-7876231.php

Rogers, Patrick and Lori Rozsa. “Plot Twist.” People, vol. 58, no. 7, pp. 89. EBSCOhost, 199.245.164.25:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=7079392&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Saker, Anne. “Peterson Trial: Trial Opens, Rival Lawyers Offer Weapon Theory, Accident Scenario to Jury.” The News & Observer, 01 July 2003, www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article213201279.html

“SPJ Code of Ethics.” Society of Professional Journalists, Sep. 2014, spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics-poster.pdf.

Springer, John. “Woman’s death in Germany 18 Years Ago Enters Novelist’s Murder Trial.” CourtTV.com, 19 August 2003, www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/19/ctv.novelist.trial/index.html.