The murder of Meredith Kercher, a student from Leeds, in Italy in 2007 provided countless column inches for the tabloid press, especially when her flat-mate Amanda Knox, from the USA, and Ms Knox’ then boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito, were made prime suspects and duly charged with the killing. Although Rudy Guede was later charged and jailed for the murder, some in the UK press still keep on pushing the idea that She Done It.
A shitty journalist ...
Not least of the papers doing the accusing has been the Daily Mail, which, with its characteristic tendency to misogyny, dubbed Ms Knox “Foxy Knoxy” and duly indulged in the usual nudge-nudgery aided and abetted by a stringer called Nick Pisa. The tsunami of crude innuendo helped convince the Kercher family that Ms Knox really did have some part in the killing. It was not the first Mail con job of this kind.
The paper had for many years kept on at one Colin Stagg, who the Police tried their best to entrap over the killing of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in front of her two-year-old son. The cops said after they failed to fit up Stagg that they were not looking for anyone else. The Nickell family believed the Mail’s finger-pointing campaign. Stagg was innocent. Robert Napper has now been convicted of the killing.
Yes, the Dacre doggies have previous when it comes to fitting up the innocent - those who read Nick Davies’ go-to book on the workings of the press, Flat Earth News, may also recall the case of the Taylor sisters, whom the paper went after some years ago - but Nick Pisa cannot merely hide behind the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker. He has to bear some share of the blame. But his shamelessness dictates otherwise.
Pisa has now featured in a Netflix feature in which, as the Independent has observed, “Former Daily Mail reporter Nick Pisa revealed he didn't fact check key information”. it gets worse: his first appearance in the film shows him telling “A murder always gets people going; bit of intrigue, bit of mystery, a whodunit. And we have here this beautiful picturesque hilltop town in the middle of Italy. It was a particularly gruesome murder: throat slit, semi-naked, blood everywhere. I mean [chuckles], what more do you want in a story?”
... and his shitty journalism
Er, we might want a journalist to do some journalism first, and the voyeurism a lot later, thanks. But Pisa does know it was someone else’s fault: “Towards the end of the documentary, Pisa attributes the blame of Knox's imprisonment to the Italian police force … Despite claiming some of the claims were ‘crazy and completely made up,’ he refuses to take accountability for the warped headlines he was responsible for”.
And then he came out with this gem: “It's not as if I can say, ‘Right, hold on a minute. I just wanna double check that myself in some other way.’ I mean, goodness knows how. And then I let my rival get in there first before me, and then, hey, I've lost a scoop”. What we aren’t told is that this approach got Pisa into serious trouble when he told the world that Ms Knox had lost her appeal against a murder conviction in 2011.
“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction” he told. The Mail later pulled the story and substituted the correct one - she won her appeal. But it was just another example of shitty journalism from the shittiest of journalists. Nick Pisa is not just a slimeball. He’s far worse than that.
8 comments:
I started to watch the documentary and I was waiting for an explanation as to why small cuts on a chin of a murder victim indicates that there was a sex game that went wrong. Then Pisa appeared - What a self-centred scumbag. It wasn't just what this excuse of a person was saying but the look on his face.
I stopped watching the documentary whilst the ultra-shit Pisa continued to talk into camera and I have no intention of going back to it.
To be fair on him, the things he says about the murder, in relation to its being a good salacious story, is exactly true: that's why the murders of young women get more coverage than any other kind, especially when a sex angle can be worked in (whether it's really there or not). The set-up as he describes it is exactly like the plot of a 70s Giallo, and as that kind of story it's perfect.
No journalist would write these stories if no one read them, if no one got a voyeuristic, sadistic, kick out of them.
Why should anyone be fair about Nick Pisa's reporting of the murder and subsequent trial? Why should it be okay to 'sex up' details with no evidence to support them and paint someone as 'foxy' just to get a headline that goes with a last name?
You never know @Stephen, next time it could be you who gets the tabloid treatment.
I'm not saying it was right, or a decent thing to do, since it's obviously not: but that kind of stuff sells: people get off on it, while pretending to be seriously reading The News. I love Gialli, the sleazier the better: but that's fiction, and the people who read drooling reports such as this bloke wrote would never admit to watching something as distasteful as Gialli.
I almost feel sorry for Nick Pisa. Almost! Then I remember how he prolonged the suffering of the Kercher family who deserved the truth and quick justice for the true killer,
Rudy Guede, who will likely be free in only a year. I also try to imagine the horror endured by two innocent young people who had their twenties snatched away. Who endured years of being hated and reviled due to lies Pisa helped perpetrate and spread. I do feel sorry for Nick Pisa. He is now reaping the very seeds he helped sow.
The Mail didn't "dub her Foxy Knoxy." If you do something called research you will see she dubbed herself "Foxy Knoxy" on her social media, and the Mail and others just lifted it.
Anonymous at 17:44
Oh right, so her skills at soccer which resulted in the title 'Foxy Knoxy' can be used when she's on trial for murder. One word - Sick.
I read this blog a while back and had not yet seen the documentary.
I was dumbfounded at the apparent lack of self awareness of that slimeball Pisa: "We're in the news business" whilst writing fiction and lies.
I was living abroad at the time and for years I thought that the young couple were guilty based on reading UK newspaper reports.
The half-wit detective seemed to me to be straight out of something Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft would write.
I would not be surprised Pisa and the cop were in cahoots and when it all went south, Pisa being a good slimeball turned dog.
Disgusting.
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