Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Joanna Yates and the uneaten pizza

This isn't about the murder of this young girl, unlike the media I have no intention of intruding on grief. What this is about is, as always, the media.

This morning on both BBC and ITV one of the main stories was the news that Joanna Yates didn't eat the pizza she'd been seen buying just before her disappearance.

On the face of what was said this was highly important. If you buy a pizza from a takeaway you're going to eat it quickly or at the least take it home to nuke it so it can be eaten you just don't leave it. As such this would certainly narrow down the time in which... oh the reconstruction shows us it's an uncooked pizza bought from a supermarket.

As such the information presented to us by a 'must churn out news' means little. Is it that the pizza wasn't found at her home in the fridge or freezer; was it that the pizza box was found sans pizza and therefore someone else ate it; are we supposed to be on the look out for a cast-off pizza in the street? We don't know because we haven't been told; simply "she didn't eat it" and the purpose of this information being given to the public is?

3 comments:

Steve Severn said...

This whole case leaves me confused as far as media is concerned. I have every symputhy with her family and friends. I would be devastated if my daughter were to go in this way and as with the Madelaine case, I think the media can help and any parent would want that, if they thought it possible they may be able to have closure in the form of an arrest or knowledge of what happened. Now i've stated that, what confuses me is the massive media spotlight on this case in particular, when every day I see in the news reports of shootings and unsolved murders etc. Mainly in the city's. What singles this case out from all the rest? Dare I say, it was a working to middle class young white women that is involved? I know that sounds contraversial, but the rest of these murders that go on get a day or two coverage, then forgotten about. I would like to hear your views on what you think singles out one case from another. I do not believe myself to be racist in any way and do not even know your ethnic background, but I am one of many in this country that have no problem whatsoever with people coming to this country to work hard and make a better life for themselves, but I am increasingly finding that when the news, local and national, is reporting murder, scams, fraud etc, it seems to be more than likely by immigrants that should not have been here in the first place. This is why the radical racists are gaining more and more support. With all this deficit cutting business, the immigration policy seems to have been forgotten yet again. It makes you wonder what else the government is sweeping to one side while all attention is on the cutbacks.

FlipC said...

My two views from June and August 07. I still don't know. It's some process in one editor's brain that kicks it off and all the others pile on.

But yes as with the infamous "Good day to bury bad news" what does fall to the single paragraph as the focus attaches itself to one item.

Steve Severn said...

Thanks for that. I thought I was the only one to find this strange, but I agree that most of the time its a photogenic thing, but in other cases, who knows. I suppose its not a question people can ask easily without being seen to not care, when really we do care, but about all the missing, not just the editors choice high profile ones.