With a few hours to spare while babysitting and an open Netflix in front of me, the new Amanda Knox documentary sat in front of me. I had talked with the mom I was babysitting for about it, realizing that I really didn't know anything about the case. I was 12 years old when the murder happened-- far too young to know any more than the name floating around the media. But right now, a majority of my closest friends are abroad and in the same context Knox had been in-- with a few even in Perugia as I type.
Intrigued about the case and fascinated by the media's coverage of it, I pressed play.
As background, Amanda Knox was a college student studying abroad in Perugia that spent four years in prison for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. She had been sentenced to 26 years but was acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court. Ultimately, the case was blown up by the media, which is part of what's covered in the documentary.
The documentary opened with a little bit of background on who Amanda Knox was-- a fun-loving college student. A little bit "quirky", as Knox called herself in the interviews for the documentary. I felt like it was a character similar to all of us college girls out there. The idea of having fun, roaming around Europe, and being 20 years and old and feeling free is a wish that many of us strive for.
The story is told chronologically with interviews from some very interesting characters: Knox; Raffaele Sollecito, Knox's boyfriend at the time; Giuliano Mignini, the main prosecutor; and Nick Pisa, a journalist from the Daily Mail covering the story.
We're walked through, step by step, what happened according to each character and based on what were in the police reports. Throughout all of it, I could understand the anger and sadness I felt for Knox and her presumed innocence. The way that she was pushed to possibly confess guilt reminded me of another Netflix original, Making a Murderer, where one of the characters was forced into falsely confessing guilt.
It angered me for both Knox and Sollecito to see the injustice from the police. It angered me for the Kercher family to be dealing with the grief of losing their daughter and sister. It angered me for Mignini to be put with such a difficult case and do his job as the prosecutor on this case.
But who I was not angered for, but rather angered by, was Nick Pisa, the journalist on this story who believed it was better to get his name on the front page than to tell the truth. The journalist who believed it was better to beat his competitors to the press, even if his facts weren't true.
"To see your name on the front page with a great story that everyone’s talking about - it’s just a fantastic buzz. I'd like to say it’s like having sex or something like that."
Regardless of what you believe about the way the case was investigated or handled in court, it's safe to assume that we can all agree that the media, who I'm normally very reluctant to blame, was one of the main villains in this case, and especially Nick Pisa in this documentary.
Pisa discusses his search to find photos on both Knox's and Sollecito's social media to make them look like the villains, even without a guilty verdict, in the press. She was referred to by her screen name, 'Foxy Knoxy' in order to incriminate her into a sex-crazed, wild, out-of-control American girl who turned a sex game wrong when she murdered her roommate.
Some of the headlines read:
"Foxy Knoxy: Behind the Hollywood smile, a liar, a narcissist, and a killer"
"Foxy Knoxy “wanted to go shopping” after Meredith’s murder"
"Foxy Knoxy claims female cell mate begs her for sex “because I’m so pretty”"
"The Foxy Knoxy show: Smiling murder suspect makes grand entrance as trial begins"
But one of the most cringeworthy quotes throughout the whole documentary:
"It's not as if I can say, 'Right, hold on a minute, I just want to double-check that myself in some other way' -- I mean, goodness knows how -- and I'll let my rival get in there first before me and then, hey, I've lost the scoop," said Nick Pisa, the journalist responsible for many of these myths perpetuated by the media in the case.
Amanda Knox had been sentenced to 26 years in prison, and the media is very much partially to blame for this wrongful conviction.
