Author Archives: lj133235

I listened to the radio show on WNYC with the producers and one of the central park five. Ms. Burns brings home the point that the conviction of the Five were racially motivated. Central Park was sacred ground in the minds of many. So the feeling was that, even though crime was rampant in NYC in the 80s; central park and its neighboring communities felt that it could not reach them and when it did they whom ever did it had to pay.

/Luc

The Central Park Five documents the wrongful conviction of five Black and Latino young men in New York City. In my opinion, the movie highlights the institutional failure of the NYPD and the Press.

The NYPD in its haste to calm people down and respond to the Mayor’s call to punish those responsible failed to investigate the crime in the right way. NYPD quickly selected these young men not because it believe that they had committed the crime but because these young men happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; though there were nothing linking them to the crime. To them it was a slam dunk: a crime plus five vulnerable young men without the proper representation equals convictions.

All the while NYC mainstream press stood by without asking a single questions of the NYPD. No one was assigned to find out about these young men. The information from the press all came from what the NYPD had released about these young men. No investigation took place.

While watching the movie, all I could think about is how come no one person decided to speak to these young men. Also I felt that the failure of the press though not racial had a lot to do with access. maybe no one wanted to offend the Mayor’s office by printing something that the Mayor, in the movie, had publicly declared a test of the city.

I felt sad watching the movie with my two boys. I felt even sadder when when they could not comprehend why “cops would send innocent people to jail.”

/Luc

Absence of Malice details what can go wrong when a reporter becomes the story instead of reporting it. The protagonist commits two sins in the movie:

First, in reporting the story she becomes so enamoured with her subjects that she fell in love with him. This is unethical because in the course of reporting she lost sight of the story and her job. This immersion into the life of the subject clouds her and blinds her from making sound decision about Gallagher.

Second, because she is so imbued into the life of Gallagher that she is willing to disclose her sources and talk to Gallagher about the information that helps upend the case against him.

It is unfortunate because she was filled with passion and appeared to be a great reported that allowed her heart to lead the story rather the subject.