Am I the only one to think the media is rapidly losing interest in the Pickton trial? A trial that was supposed to be a maze of twists and (sometimes disturbing) turns has quickly peetered out into somewhat of a chess match. What was presented as a real life “Silence of the Lambs” has turned into just another trial.
It’s a sick fact, but what lured so much media attention to the trial was the extreme shock value of the murders. If blood stirs the media into a feeding frenzy, then severed heads in a freezer creates a kind of media buzz that this city rarely sees.
Then the days turned into weeks and the graphic details stopped coming. People who came expecting a parade of body parts were left wondering where the gore was. Yes it was hard to constantly be reminded of how brutal the lives of the these women were, but the pornographic details have been few and far between. And so the media has lost interest.
It seems more and more like the newspapers are going through the motions in trial coverage. The Vancouver Sun features all trial coverage pretty close to the front of their paper, but I don’t see a real passion in their coverage. The Pickton trial taunted media vultures with the promise of bloody meat, and then provided nothing but scraps. So they still pick away at whats there, but are already starting to scour for something jucier.
It’s a shame, because the Pickton trial is actually pretty interesting. Did Robert Pickton act alone? I doubt it, my gut feeling tells me that mutiple people were killing women at that farm. Now evidence is starting to appear that makes my gut feeling feel like a pretty good hunch.
I also am giving full credit to Pickton’s defense. Robert Pickton had been cast as someone more demon than man before the trial even started, and now the defense has managed to make him almost sympathetic. The fact that there is even a shadow of a doubt in the media speaks to how well the defense has played their hand.
But as for the gory details? Enough have managed to surface to keep the media marginaly interested (Syringe full of radiator fluid? Thats ugly stuff) but those interested in the hardcore death porn have begun to look elsewhere.
I love to watch media trends, and this is a pretty interesting one developing. Maybe more than the trial itself.
Six-Oh-Four 