Chris Cuomo viciously bullied Amanda Knox and called it journalism.

[pnwmom]

But she bore the attacks with enormous grace and self-composure.

It’s not just the tabloids in Italy and England that call open season on women’s sex lives. In his CNN interview, Chris Cuomo was particularly nasty. Can you imagine him speaking this way to a man who had sex in Italy? Because Amanda dared to have a sex life, she must be an evil person – the kind who might murder a roommate she’d known for 3 weeks. (Though there wasn’t a single speck of forensic evidence putting Amanda in the murder room. With her witchly powers, she must have figured out some way to magically clean her invisible DNA and fingerprints while only leaving those of Rudy Guede.)


http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/08/1983541/cnn-anchor-bullies-amanda-knox/


“As Knox became more agitated and appeared to be on the verge of tears, Cuomo continued to insist that someone must have told the prosecution that Knox had a secret kinky sex life, even asserting, ‘you’re a freak!’ Finally, she burst out:

“‘They didn’t get it from me, and they didn’t get it from witnesses. It literally came from the prosecution. And this is what I’ve been up against this entire time. This fact that the prosecution was projecting onto what happened their own theories about young women and women who are…I was sexually active. I was not sexually deviant.’

“Cuomo’s attempt to use suggestions of sexual deviance to bully Knox follows in a long tradition of public entitlement to scrutinize and judge female sexuality. The recent string of highly publicized sexual assaults has exposed how the media weaves narratives in which “drunk party girls” get what they deserve. Meanwhile, comprehensive sex education is stifled in many conservative states lest children become too comfortable with their sexuality.”

[Blue_Tires]

1. Classless line of questioning...

Although it should be said 99.9% of U.S. media have been on the other extreme from the start; asking Knox and her supporters nothing but fluffy softball questions...

[maxsolomon]

4. she's given 1000 interviews?

1/1000 is the only way to meet your percentage!

what hardball questions remain to be asked?

[Blue_Tires]

5. I'm referring to all the interviews with family members/lawyers

back when she was still in...

[maxsolomon]

8. So what should they have asked then?

Why was your daughter having premarital sex?
Did she worship Satan at the Univ of Washington?
I thought you were supposed to be rich, so why are you all mortgaging your houses to pay her lawyers?

American media is going to be sympathetic to a sympathetic American accused of crime overseas, particularly when they are innocent.

[Blue_Tires]

10. My point of it is

in those interviews and news analysis, there was never any consideration whatsoever that Knox was *anything* but completely innocent, never a dissenting voice, etc...

Ironically these daily "Free Amanda" interviews were coming around the time just before Troy Davis' execution, and no one in the media was campaigning for him...Troy Davis' attorney had to share equal time with the surviving family of the person he was wrongly convicted of killing (who of course couldn't wait to pull the switch)

[maxsolomon]

12. You and I remember different things

The "Free Amanda" interviews were subsequent to the British & Italian press slandering her character with undisguised joy, poisoning the jury pool in Perugia. And it took a while for the American Press to start paying attention. She'd been in jail for what, 2 years at that point? I remember many articles discussing the evidence and her possible guilt, especially because of her (coerced, retracted) accusation of her boss, and the thickheaded refusal on the part of the Kirchers to admit the absurdity of Mignini's case.

She IS completely innocent. In fact, her innocence, her naivete, was her downfall. She had premarital sex, she smoked weed, she admitted it freely. So has every woman I've dated, thank Christ. It doesn't make her a devil, it doesn't make her a whore. It makes her a normal American girl, and probably a normal Italian or British girl. She didn't stab her roommate multiple times in a satanic ritual/group sex orgy, she didn't do cartwheels at the police station. Rudy Guede killed Meredith Kircher, alone.

Troy Davis' innocent or guilt is not relevant to Amanda Knox's case. There can be 2 injustices at once.

[Blue_Tires]

14. I just wish the media cared as much for one as they did the other

But I know the score... Davis wasn't young, attractive, and there wasn't some erotic angle for the national media to easily exploit...Nevermind the fact that Davis had a much stronger case for acquittal

[Merlot]

15. "a much stronger case for acquittal"

How do you figure? And why does it need to be a competition? The Knox case was a travesty.

[pnwmom]

19. The "erotic angle" is what put Amanda into prison in the first place.

That's what made the puritanical Italians in the prosecutor's office suspect her in the first place, and that's why the tabloids took up the witch hunt against her.

And she has what should have been an iron-clad case for acquittal -- the appeals court judge said there was NO EVIDENCE OF HER GUILT.

And he was right.

There was no forensic evidence at all that linked Amanda to the murder scene.
The "bloody footprints" in the hall tested NEGATIVE for blood.
The "murder weapon" didn't match the shape of the knife outlined in blood on the sheet -- and contained no DNA from the victim.
The coerced statement putting Amanda on the scene (that she withdrew hours later) was ruled INADMISSIBLE in the murder trial.

[pnwmom]

18. +1000. n/t

[pnwmom]

17. Amanda wasn't giving ANY interviews at all until recently.

She couldn't do any interviews in prison and she waited for these recent interviews till after the appeals trial.

And there have always been dissenting voices in the media. You'd probably like Anne Coulter's views.

Would you please point me to a single piece of forensic evidence that placed Amanda in a murder room that yielded more than 85 pieces of evidence?

[pnwmom]

16. She's only given a handful of interviews, and I've not seen any that would be

considered fluff.

I thought Sawyer's was slut-shaming, too, but not as bad as Cuomo's.

[geek tragedy]

2. panty-sniffing, ambulance-chasing asshole, ugh nt

[tridim]

3. She sounds very strong.

I didn't know all that stuff about the prosecution projecting deviant behavior onto her. Just awful.

[senseandsensibility]

6. I am very unimpressed with Chris Cuomo

from his days as an announcer for some true crime show where he read cue cards written for him while looking stiffly into the camera. Talk about someone with connections and no talent.

[Cha]

7. Shame on him. WTF! "no group activities?"..

glad it's exposed on ThinkProgress. Wonder if she had an inkling or was completely blindsided by Cuomo's behavior.

This has become about him now.. not his story. good job, asshole.

thanks pnwmom

[The Magistrate]

9. The Man Needs A Serious Attitude Adjustment, Ma'am....

Hate to think what kind of swill is on his hard drive.

[winstars]

11. Thankfully his "EXCLUSIVE" interview was knocked off by the events in Cleveland...

[Pisces]

13. Chris Cuomo was disgusting. He crossed the line. CNN is now the Enquirer of news channels.

[UTUSN]

20. After I picked up my jaw, I suspected he was "bad cop" to make her sympathetic

This was the first time I had seen him for that long and he was so brutish, tactless, like he didn't grow up with all the advantages to be sophisticated.

[pnwmom]

21. Diane Sawyer was pretty harsh, too, and maybe she was trying to be the bad cop.

But after seeing Cuomo's whole interview, I think he's really just nasty.

And I can't imagine his father, were he in Chris's shoes, behaving in that way.

[alp227]

22. "Chris, go to your room." -NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo n/t