Now Denby, that guy was a dork. Wasn't he brought down by ... porn addiction?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 12 April 2024 01:05 (one month ago) link
I often read Brody because his POV and mine rarely intersect but he's good at articulating that POV.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 April 2024 01:06 (one month ago) link
reviews by known movie critics are one of the things that make basic media literacy an easier concept to explain, imo. you know the source, you get a handle on their biases, and you have your lens to decipher whether something they liked or panned will appeal to you based on your differing stancesI guess some of them are unreadable or corny, though
― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 12 April 2024 12:49 (one month ago) link
I used to read the New Yorker to learn something new which was my main draw to Brody for all the wild references. Now I’m older and need stuff to get to the point quicker so I read the internet. I’m definitely stupider but that’s ok
― Heez, Friday, 12 April 2024 13:02 (one month ago) link
Good story: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/the-ex-nypd-official-trying-to-tame-new-yorks-trash
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 April 2024 13:03 (one month ago) link
Remnick succession speculation:"...in recent months, the longtime New Yorker editor has increasingly mused to peers about his inevitable departure — and who might take his place."https://www.semafor.com/article/04/28/2024/the-new-yorkers-succession-race-is-kicking-off
― jaymc, Monday, 29 April 2024 01:58 (three weeks ago) link
just came to post that. not nick thompson, please
― brony james (k3vin k.), Monday, 29 April 2024 02:20 (three weeks ago) link
Increasingly mused
― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Monday, 29 April 2024 02:49 (three weeks ago) link
lol
― mookieproof, Monday, 29 April 2024 02:56 (three weeks ago) link
Will dive in later. There was a lot of scepticism on twitter that this wasn't quite right.
Wrongful convictions are not a novel phenomenon, but the way Lucy Letby was strung-up seems particularly tied to the state of 2010s Britain: austerity-wracked, paranoid and incompetent https://t.co/9auf64Def1— noah kulwin (@nkulw) May 13, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 13 May 2024 20:14 (one week ago) link
I don’t really even know where to start with that article man. what a remarkable and tragic story.
say what you might about the US system of justice, but that trial (at least as portrayed in that story) was a farce. the standard of guilt is insane. I’m american so maybe I just don’t get it!
having not witnessed anything or read the autopsy reports myself, I can speak with at least a bit of authority that the medical evidence marshaled against letby (again, at least as reported in that piece — I hadn’t heard of the case before this) went beyond weak, it was completely preposterous. that it was allowed to stand and not seriously cross-examined by the defense is farcical.
you could spend a single day even in an elite hospital (which is, from what I gather, most certainly not descriptive of this facility) and instantly grasp the level of dysfunction, or the stark understaffing relative to what any patient or family member would desire, that could plausibly lead to tragedies like these. (also: she may very well have been an awful nurse, which is not a crime!) this is not even to mention the most likely explanation that the deaths were completely random, even accounting for the above.
the gag order, again speaking as an american, is also plainly grotesque! you can’t even read skeptical stories about this, this article included, in england. that’s insane to me. and the dearth of skeptical examinations of the case in the press is no doubt not coincidental.
she should be freed
― brony james (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 00:13 (one week ago) link
she would probably be lynched if she was. all the uk media (as far as i saw) portrayed her as the devil incarnate. she must be in the top 5 most publicly hated individuals in the UK.
― stirmonster, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 00:22 (one week ago) link
Wow and you’ve got the whole royal family there
― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 02:32 (one week ago) link
is there something to the framing that the NHS is seen with such esteem? I’ve read previous articles on the case and, regardless of whether she was a good nurse, she seems like someone who took a difficult job with a huge emotional burden. and it was at an understaffed, under-resourced, hospital that was routinely having to take premature newborns that they were not classified to take. the fact that they correlated her record with deaths but didn’t bother to check that stat for other nurses is insane. it’s pure “burn the witch” behavior. maybe she is guilty of something, but nothing I’ve read indicates they proved that. just that they found their scapegoat
― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 03:00 (one week ago) link
just looking at some of the UK reactions to this story, a lot of people seem very stuck on the idea that someone *had* to have killed those babies
― Roz, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 03:24 (one week ago) link
my main takeaway (even prior to this piece) has been that her defence was so wildly incompetent it beggars belief.
the gag order is not completely unreasonable - there is a retrial on one of the charges that the jury couldn't reach a verdict, but there are a lot of issues with how those reporting restrictions play out in practice in the uk.
― ufo, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 03:36 (one week ago) link
again, very american perspective on freedom of the press here, but that the article is blocked in england is something that is so indefensible that how things play out in practice should be an indictment of whatever principle supposedly undergirds it
― brony james (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 03:40 (one week ago) link
restrictions to avoid prejudicing a jury are reasonable, but there are certainly issues with how this plays out in practice in the uk. i do not think the answer is to give the deranged uk press freer reign though
― ufo, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 04:09 (one week ago) link
curious about how many brits want to read this but cannot get around the geofencing
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 04:17 (one week ago) link
i get a 404 error on the article. But just read it on the wayback machine. fucking hell.
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 07:55 (one week ago) link
Archive ph should have it
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 08:11 (one week ago) link
i do not think the answer is to give the deranged uk press freer reign though
otm forever
― devvvine, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 08:48 (one week ago) link
I read it through my local library via Libby app.
Shocking case, defence were negligible in not challenging more robustly the statistics used to convict her.
― Dan Worsley, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 11:17 (one week ago) link
it's just completely baffling how her defence had an expert witness lined up who was aware of a lot of the issues with the prosecution's case and planning to challenge them, but didn't actually call him to testify? that's a level of negligence/incompetence that's very hard to understand
― ufo, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 11:55 (one week ago) link
also just having letby testify seems like an obviously poor choice that i struggle to understand
― ufo, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 12:06 (one week ago) link
Weird that this NY-er article is blocked but a BBC documentary and a Daily Mail podcast on the case are apparently fine?
― Roz, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 12:53 (one week ago) link
yes, that is strange…I wonder why that could be…
― brony james (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 13:02 (one week ago) link
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 15:56 (one week ago) link
Need to find a way to read this later. I can't believe it's blocked. Wtf.
― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 16:00 (one week ago) link
https://archive.ph/TgC1X
― fpsa, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 16:24 (one week ago) link
the adversarial judicial system was a mistake
― 龜, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 21:36 (one week ago) link
just read that, wouldn’t have without it being posted here. seems completely insane that she was convicted.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 22:49 (one week ago) link
the documentary was released the day of her conviction, which wasn't an issue as the retrial hadn't been announced yet, and the podcast was documenting the trial as it happens, as they're allowed to report on the case as it happens as long as they do so neutrally which usually means just directly quoting the transcript but the uk press of course does not usually do this in a way i'd consider responsible. it is a bit of a hole that the documentary is still accessible given the upcoming trial though, it's all a mess
― ufo, Wednesday, 15 May 2024 23:15 (one week ago) link
I’m truly trying to understand your perspective here. what do you think the purpose of a free press is beyond court stenography? I really don’t mean to be rude
― brony james (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 15 May 2024 23:46 (one week ago) link
i think ufo is just trying to describe how media outlets in the UK are trying to comply with a contempt of court law, which was mentioned in the article: https://www.gov.uk/contempt-of-court
i wouldn't read into it more than that
― 龜, Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:01 (one week ago) link
more than one poster itt has essentially defended the practice as a net good, so that’s what I’m trying to understand
― brony james (k3vin k.), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:21 (one week ago) link
and we seem to have found ourselves in a situation where documentaries produced by the local police and broadcast by the BBC are freely available, along with a comically credulous body of reporting by other british press outlets, with the british public seemingly devouring this as they do royal gossip, while actual indenpendent reporting is blocked — and instead of shrugging our shoulders I’m wondering if that might be examined a little bit
― brony james (k3vin k.), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:27 (one week ago) link
yeah, agreed
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:43 (one week ago) link
U.S. freedom of the press is not perfect, but it is in some basic respects more free than even in many other democratic countries.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:52 (one week ago) link
(speaking only in terms of constitutional protections — on other fronts, like ownership pressures and working conditions, it's not a great place to be a reporter)
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:57 (one week ago) link
The First Amendment, it turns out, is pretty great after SCOTUS started expanding it 100 years ago -- before contracting it.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 16 May 2024 00:59 (one week ago) link
It's quite amazing reading this piece having previously only read stuff about the case in the British press, including a long, detailed article in The Guardian that didn't express a scintilla of doubt about Letby's guilt. I'm astonished that the key expert witness was a retired paediatrician who had randomly read an article about the case in the press and then decided to volunteer his services... you'd think there would be some due process about identifying the right person to review the evidence!
― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 16 May 2024 01:46 (one week ago) link
the author wrote a very sensitive book about mental illness a couple of years back. recommended.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 16 May 2024 01:53 (one week ago) link
i think the basic principle that the media should avoid prejudicing a prominent criminal trial is worthwhile (similar laws apply in australia where i am but i can't think of any case that's been as messy as this one) but there's absolutely some inconsistency in how that seems to play out in practice, and the situation with the reporting restrictions around this case (that being that a retrial on one charge was announced a few months after the trial, which reintroduces the reporting restrictions just a few months after the verdict for the other charges was announced and the press had free rein with it for a bit) are quite unusual and i can't think of a similar situation here (though i can think of one where a prominent verdict was suppressed due to the defendant facing similar charges at another upcoming trial, and a lot of outlets were fined for breaching the order). at the very least the reporting restrictions for the retrial really should include the previously published material like the bbc documentary etc. being temporarily removed, or it would be reasonable to just give up on the idea in this case given how widely publicised the other verdicts were. the retrial being announced a few months later seems to be a weird edge case for the reporting restriction laws that produces particularly bad & messy results
― ufo, Thursday, 16 May 2024 04:46 (one week ago) link
re messy Australian cases might include rapey Bruce and his multiple other rapes being kept quiet
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 16 May 2024 05:24 (one week ago) link
that was a somewhat different reporting restriction (it was about protecting the identity and reputation of the defendant in a sexual assault case before they were committed to stand trial) and was unambiguously bad and that particular law has since been repealed
― ufo, Thursday, 16 May 2024 06:28 (one week ago) link
Do people really think, even from a distance to the UK, that if contempt of court didn't exist, the UK papers would have managed to create a case against the prosecution of someone accused of murdering infants? Or that this would be a net good thing?
Even under the current law, the opposite is true. Many people accused of a serious crime are treated as guilty in the media. Given the numerous times an innocent person has been treated as guilty after being arrested, it seems the law could go further.
I'm no expert but the complication here seems to be that someone already had a trial at which they were found guilty and now another separate one is upcoming. So it seems the entire law sort of breaks in that system, as usually all the reporting happens freely once a trial is over.
One thing I will say is that a long time ago I worked in local news reporting for BBC News Online, and there was a murder trial. And after a verdict is handed down in the UK, every paper or website will write a sort of broader story of what happened, with the freedom allowed by the fact the trial is over. Especially if the person is found guilty. I had to write one of these after weeks of strictly assuming innocence until proven guilty, and reporting accordingly. In the particular case, there was no real doubt about the guilt of the person involved. But I still found it weird how we as a news organisation automatically switched our brains to 'here is the exact truth and detail of what happened, since it has now been proven by a court'. Like obv as an Irish person in the UK I find that weird. I remember talking about it here.
I still can see why it exists though, because the press would dig up everything and anything against innocent people otherwise.
In this case, I think if you read a wide range of sources about the trial, the New Yorker article omits almost any evidence that might make you think Letby could be guilty. For example the doctor who compares the trauma suffered by one of the victims to a road traffic accident. I'm not keen to dredge through all the evidence but you can find if you so wish.
I do think it seems a pretty weak case against her but I don't know what to believe about what actually happened.
― LocalGarda, Thursday, 16 May 2024 06:48 (one week ago) link
yeah I broadly agree with that and after reading up a bit more, there did seem to be some cherry picking in terms of which evidence was cited in the story.
but I think it's besides the point whether she did it or not - what the story highlights is that there were serious issues with the methodology and evidence used to determine her guilt, as well as the surrounding circumstances of the unit, which were largely ignored and suggests an unsafe conviction.
― Roz, Thursday, 16 May 2024 07:32 (one week ago) link
The only witnesses Myers called were the hospital’s plumber, who spoke about unsanitary conditions, and Letby, who testified for fourteen days.
This seems insane.
― ledge, Thursday, 16 May 2024 07:55 (one week ago) link
Agree, Roz.
― LocalGarda, Thursday, 16 May 2024 08:05 (one week ago) link