Change of Venue Nearly Guaranteed

The old saw about "just because you can doesn't mean you should" might apply here. 

The over-active Adam Widener of 15 Finds Out fame is putting the WANE TV news reputation in jeopardy once again with his latest effort:

WANE TV thinks it's important that you know all about the childhood of unfortunate Charles Benson, now accused in the Eby Avenue murder, which thanks to WANE TV's grainy footage, we've seen 1,000 times. The yearbook pictures, the stories of a once promising young child who, because of the mean streets of Fort Wayne, suddenly became a murdering monster, er, make that an alleged murdering monster.

The story, which aired Monday, and is online now, works very hard to portray poor Charles Benson as the real victim in this tragedy. In fact, Mr. Widener never mentions the name of the actual murder victim, John Damarcus Holman in his story. He's the dead guy, remember? He's the person who's family now grieves. But, WANE TV and Mr. Widener seem to forget about that. Oh, the anchors do mention it once in the intro to the story, but that's all the play the real victim, the dead guy, gets here. 

While it's a pretty boring and mundane story, it is complete with an expert Forensic Psychologist pontificating and musing about environment and society and it does offer a rather complete road map for Mr. Benson's defense attorney. It will be an invaluable tool in guiding a confused, teary-eyed jury to a verdict of not guilty. What a great way to taint the prospective jury pool! The Maven bets the first thing Mr. Benson's attorney will ask for is a change of venue due to media publicity. If the Maven were the judge, the Maven would tend to agree. 

Before someone gets up on a chair and starts screaming about Freedom of the Press, let's remember that WANE TV and Mr. Widener have a spotty record when it comes to their "investigations".  Oh, sure, they ran some money-begging scammers out of town, and some will say they only took the credit while others, including law enforcement did the actual leg work.   But the Maven is willing to give them an 'attaboy' on that one. 

A couple of years ago, 15 Finds Out stuck their media elitist noses into a police-involved auto accident. WANE TV and Mr. Widener found it necessary, for reasons unknown, to publish the complete disciplinary records of each officer involved. None of the information in the police officers records had any bearing on the accident investigation, but WANE TV wanted you to know. Independent accident investigators found no wrong doing in the case. However, many in the police community and community at large took issue with the story, and WANE TV suffered a minor backlash for what many saw as an  attempt to tarnish the reputations of two City police officers.

And then there's the case of the Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man who kidnapped and held 3 women captive for more than a decade. WANE TV fell all over itself attempting to locate Castro's sister who reportedly lived in Fort Wayne. She'd been interviewed by the national media and WANE TV wanted an interview, too. They never did locate her, but in their efforts to find her, WANE TV reported that her house had been foreclosed upon and that she had been evicted from a local apartment complex, five years ago. How that relates to three kidnapped women in Cleveland is not well understood. Seems more like they tried to trash her reputation instead. Vindictive?

The bottom line is just because media can dig up information, usually public information, the choice of how it's used, when it's used and for what reason it's used in publication, should always be questioned. In this case, there is a possibility that a man might go free for murder if WANE TV and Mr. Widener's sympathetic news story touches just one juror.