Table of Contents:

I. Why Greta, Geraldo and Fox News are Bad for Law Enforcement

II. Upcoming Street Survival Seminars

Why Greta, Geraldo and Fox News are Bad for Law Enforcement

By Dave Smith
Lead Street Survival Seminar Instructor

This Monday we found Fox News transfixed with yet another beautiful missing coed. We watch talking heads speculate ad nauseaum about what they are watching and we watch real-time as law enforcement searches for the missing woman.

This has become a very routine technique for Fox News and many of the other outlets that our society uses to get its "news." Most of what we heard was not actually news or even particularly factual, but mere speculation about what happened in Madison, Wisconsin the night this particular beauty disappeared. I am not sure what will happen but the cynical cop side of me of fears the worse and aches for her loved ones.

I am, however, sure of what will happen on Fox News today as this story unfolds. We will watch as our brothers and sisters search to identify this victim and solve this crime. Their every movement, their every utterance will be speculated upon by talking head "experts" who are usually lawyers or judges or medical examiners who know no more than we do about this particular crime. Geraldo Rivera will be brought in as a valid journalist when he is truly a ranting ideologue who more often than not will disparage the police or prosecutors if he gets a chance.

Tonight, Greta Van Sustern will overdramatically discuss this tragedy and any others she can find to speculate upon. The woman whose career in cable news was born from her silly little "micro-verdicts" throughout the O.J. Simpson trial has truly become the television version of a vampire feeding on the blood, death and suffering of others. She offers absurd speculations and expansive comments about crimes just occurred or remembered. She will often join Geraldo in some ridiculously broad conclusion based on no facts whatsoever but validated by a lineup of talking heads answering speculative questions from a reality based on the assumptions being made right there...in other words, creating their own reality and pseudo-facts.

I always pity the families of the victims and the agencies involved in these self-selected "high profile" crimes. This is the paradox; the crimes selected are often very mundane in our world. No less and no more tragic than a plethora of crimes that occur in our society frequently, Fox and the lesser entities of cable news will suddenly find a victim that catches their fancy and off they go. Very often, nothing is certain in this cases but the repetitive pontificating is no less intense. Who is a suspect, a person of interest, a "we don't have a name for it anymore," none of that matters as dribble spews forth on and on. It used to be a common saying in police work, "everyone is a suspect," but now law enforcement has to use euphemisms or deny leads just continue their investigation.

A beautiful child and classmate of my youngest daughter was recently murdered along with her mother and two siblings by her father who unsuccessfully attempted to make the crime look like his wife was the offender as the family drove the first leg of their summer vacation. This caught the imagination of Fox and CNN and even though the surviving father was shot superficially in the leg, Greta and Nancy Grace and all the other harpies of death speculated about moms who kill, and talked about how the father was not even a person of interest. My wife and I watched all this with increasing agitation, wondering how soon the dad was going to be arrested. He was arrested, of course, and is awaiting trial back here in Illinois.

What Fox and CNN and all the other 24/7 "news" outlets need are ombudsmen who internally monitor what is said on the air and how crimes are presented to the viewing public. Every time the networks are wrong they should be called on it; in fact, they should have to mea culpa publicly for it. They should understand that justice is not an instant process but often a long and tragically emotional process of victims and perpetrators, and often the public speculation and attention interrupts the steps involved.

Choosing one crime out of many to over-investigate and microscopically speculate upon doesn't do anything to improve justice, it just increases ratings. In fact, it often leaves the public with a gross misunderstanding of the criminal justice system, the investigative process, and even the frequency and nature of crimes. If you believe cable news networks, pregnant women should fear their mates above all else, all prosecutors are corrupt, beautiful coeds are the predominant victims of violent crime, children are constantly being snatched by strangers, and on and on.

You do your job in a world filled with criminals and victims and a system that demands you prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt. The adversarial nature of the judicial process is tough enough without the defense attorney's great allies in the media constantly criticizing the police and prosecution. Such cases as the "Duke Rape Case" suddenly became an indictment of prosecutions everywhere when Greta uttered the absurdity that "thank God this happened to rich college kids so they could defend themselves as everyday this happened to poor kids who would certainly have gone to jail."

Greta, get a grip, it was because they were "rich college kids" that made this case important for a desperate prosecutor pandering for reelection, and it was the attention this crime received from Fox and CNN that made it a cause for a broad group of factions who used it to garner public opinion for their particular agendas. The other victim in this farce was the criminal justice system, the same system Greta damaged in the Simpson Trial when she grabbed her fame. At that time I interviewed her for LETN and asked her if it wasn't wrong for her to do her daily "micro-verdicts" on the day's testimony. She replied she wouldn't have a job if she didn't and I told her the criminal justice system didn't exist to give her a job...I guess I was wrong.

I hope your agency isn't the next one to come under the speculation of the Cable Fools and I wish the Madison Police Department well in their investigation of this tragic case. I guess the best way to handle this is to assign your smoothest communicator to feed the networks with sound bites while the rest of you do your jobs...good luck.


II. Upcoming Street Survival Seminars

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