One case. And a pretty interesting one at that. What I'm seeing on TV is case after case after case after case, as soon as one is solved, the next pretty girl to turn up missing anywhere in the country is the media's next darling dead girl, first giving us pictures, and a bio, and a tearful family, getting us all to care, like it's any of our business. They aren't our family. It's not even our town.
But if you give a look at the newspapers of the 20s & 30s, there was the same breathless publicizing of every case involving pretty girls, adultery, or murder. Just off the top of my head, there was Bonnie & Clyde, the Hall-Mills case (adulterous minister murdered in an orchard with lover), the Judd Gray murder (wife's lover beat husband to death with a sashweight), white slavers, corpses in burning garages, rival bootleggers in shootouts with gun molls, etc. etc.
Even if you go back to the 1870s and 1880s, there was a thriving "penny dreadful" literature based on the Wild West and the seamy side of New York, featuring damsels in distress, soiled doves, and gamblers . . . The Police Gazette made its owner very rich by covering 'innocent girl missing in the Bowery' stories as well as lifestyles of the rich and famous.
The major difference is I think the widespread availability of hundreds and hundreds of TV channels with lots of time to fill. The competition is more cut-throat even than the days of multiple newspapers in a single town, and the stations will put what sells on the air. I think that competition for readers is what drove the tabloid murder-and-adultery fest (the radio stations couldn't broadcast that stuff under strict FCC rules at the time), and it's driving the competition for scarce viewers among numerous TV outlets today.
I never watch TV, so it all mostly passes me by. I watched the sentencing hearing on the live link provided by a FReeper.
let's hope you have a beautiful daughter who gets raped and murdered, and then you can ask the media to leave well alone and not attempt to assist in running down the pervs...from the little girl in colorado to florida victims, the media obsession is helping to catch people, so who cares if they do it for ratings if the results are justice? and just so you can take your thoughts to the bank, don't forget to diss beth holloway twitty for keeping your gripe a reality in her anguish over her own daughter's loss...the monkey's ass isn't only in the backyard of the VDS neighbor