Amanda Knox Is Guilty... Of Making Newspapers Jump The Gun On Guilty Headlines
from the dewey-beats-truman dept
Almost certainly the most famous case of incorrect headlines by a newspaper trying to rush to press early goes to the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline in the Chicago Tribune, published on November 3, 1948... which was, of course, actually the day that Truman defeated Dewey.![](https://i.imgur.com/Lx11K.jpg)
But it appears that the eager button pushers in various newsrooms simply heard "guilty" and hit "publish" on the "guilty" versions of the story. Malcolm Coles' blog presented a bunch of evidence of various newspapers going live with the "guilty version."
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As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.The various newspapers that published the "wrong" story quickly updated to the "correct" one -- almost certainly also pre-written with similar details of "reactions" that hadn't actually happened at the time of writing. But that also resulted in some interesting juxtaposition while Google News had competing headlines from the same sources:
A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.
Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.
Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.
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Filed Under: amanda knox, guilty, headlines, journalism