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Brodie

Serial - The Podcast

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Well it would also be strange if they introduced a bunch of new facts in the last two episodes, unless they were just recently revealed.  It was already a little hokey the way they held back information in the first few episodes.

 

For me the peak was the conversation with the Innocence Project folks.  It was an interesting discussion anyway and then the lady she's talking to decides to assign her students to the case.  

 

It's mind blowing that Nisha mentions that she talked about the video store in the one damming phone call that the case hinges on.  She says this unprompted (the prosecutor has to cut her off even!).  There doesn't seem to have been much followup on this, although the full transcripts are not available.  But this seems like a mistake almost as big as not following up with the library alibi.

 

Some interesting followup on what her laywer could have done in cross: 

 

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2014/12/ive-done-nine-posts-herehereherehereherehereherehere-andhere-about-sarah-koenigsserial-podcast-which-deals-withthe.html

 

So, that's my strategy. You start with The Nisha call being pretty damning based on the prosecution's case. To believe Adnan, you have to believe (1) Jay made some kind of butt dial to Nisha; and (2) an unanswered call that keeps ringing could register as a couple minute call OR Nisha is wrong about not having an answering machine on her phone  (by the way, how did the prosecution or defense not figure out whether Nisha's phone had an answering machine and/or use Adnan's cell phone or another phone to test out how unanswered calls registered in call logs?). If I'm a juror just hearing the prosecution's side of things, this is pretty damning.

After the above interrogations, however, I now have to believe the following to think that Jay's story bears any relation to reality: (1) Jay is WAY off on when he left Jenn's house; (2) Jay is WAY off on the length of The Nisha call; (3) Jay is mistaken about where The Nisha call took place OR the cell tower data is unreliable; (4) Nisha is mistaken about the call taking place while Jay worked at the adult video store; and (5) Nisha is mistaken about the call taking place towards the night.

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It was really interesting this episode to hear Adnan react to being a character in a story. His reaction to Koenig asking about the donations was just a really human way to react to being commodified and reduced to basically the main character in a narrative about how bad he maybe is, probably.

 

But even more interesting to me is the way that Koenig has become a character herself recently. Mostly though, it's just that hearing her reactions to Islamophobia and the effect it has on a community -- her disbelief and incredulity, how she glosses over it or just laughs nervously -- is sometimes really uncomfortable. Has anyone else picked up on this or am I just hearing something that isn't there?

 

I have thoughts on the pacing and format of the show too, but I'll hold off until after next week to type that all up. But basically, I think it's been fine and the more recent episodes are just as interesting as the early ones, just in a different way. There's less concrete evidence being discussed -- here's this timeline that falls apart, they had 14 cell tower pings to go on and used 4, etc -- and more treating Adnan as a person who is alive and had the lived experience of going through the trial and everything before and after, not just as some personality that exists completely within this story that's being told.

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But even more interesting to me is the way that Koenig has become a character herself recently. Mostly though, it's just that hearing her reactions to Islamophobia and the effect it has on a community -- her disbelief and incredulity, how she glosses over it or just laughs nervously -- is sometimes really uncomfortable. Has anyone else picked up on this or am I just hearing something that isn't there?

 

I think this is what you're getting at, but I did find it very troubling to hear her say that she didn't think that prejudice was an element in the case. I was waiting for her to say that after investigating she realised it was a factor, but instead she just detailed out the ways the prejudice had affected things and yet she seemed to think that it wasn't quite racism? It was skirted a bit, which felt weird. I kind of read it like she didn't want to tackle the can of worms involved with trying to explain how people can be subconsciously racist but maybe I'm being optimistic about her treatment of it.

 

In a somewhat related field, I feel like even more than Adnan, the story that has arisen is of how the justice system is a flawed mess. Partly because some of these things are really hard to do and in other ways because serious problems go unchecked. But ultimately it's horrifyingly fascinating to hear how such a serious consequence can arise from a system that really is not robust. I'm not that surprised that this can happen, but having a 10 hour discussion of one individual being put through it really does hammer the point home.

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To be clear, I've found Serial fascinating and worthwhile as an experiment in this kind of storytelling, and I think it's done an excellent job of showcasing the difficulties in defending and prosecuting a case like this, and laid bare the kind of work that journalists go through.  But I'm also finding it increasingly unsettling and unsatisfactory.  Which is kind of interesting in itself, I'm rarely this conflicted about how I feel about something. 

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I think this is what you're getting at, but I did find it very troubling to hear her say that she didn't think that prejudice was an element in the case. I was waiting for her to say that after investigating she realised it was a factor, but instead she just detailed out the ways the prejudice had affected things and yet she seemed to think that it wasn't quite racism? It was skirted a bit, which felt weird. I kind of read it like she didn't want to tackle the can of worms involved with trying to explain how people can be subconsciously racist but maybe I'm being optimistic about her treatment of it.

 

It's that and other things. Like her reaction to a kid being told they can't give rides to girls anymore is just "hahaha, how ridiculous, what an overprotective dad," not, you know, "I guess certain people believed -- with or without merit -- that a young boy who looks like you look and who worships like you worship was facing malicious prosecution for doing something similar for a model minority, so that makes sense." Or comparing growing up in a small town to growing up as a part of an isolated community in a larger city, where the first is the case because there's no one around and the second is the case even though there are people around, and you're isolated in part because of racism. The overt grossness of her just saying, "No, I don't think racial prejudice is really a factor," is what made me start really paying attention to that kind of thing, though.

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It's that and other things. Like her reaction to a kid being told they can't give rides to girls anymore is just "hahaha, how ridiculous, what an overprotective dad," not, you know, "I guess certain people believed -- with or without merit -- that a young boy who looks like you look and who worships like you worship was facing malicious prosecution for doing something similar for a model minority, so that makes sense." Or comparing growing up in a small town to growing up as a part of an isolated community in a larger city, where the first is the case because there's no one around and the second is the case even though there are people around, and you're isolated in part because of racism. The overt grossness of her just saying, "No, I don't think racial prejudice is really a factor," is what made me start really paying attention to that kind of thing, though.

 

Oh man I actually missed that at the time, but it's pretty terrible in retrospect since she has just done an episode where people were outright profiling Adnan, she doesn't stop to think that maybe the parents had a good idea in the back of their head rather than "oh wacky, guess some parents in your area are overprotective"?

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This ended today.

 

I feel like the ending was pretty competent. I wonder now if they didn't expect the serialised nature to actually hook people in so much to wanting more and more. It would make sense if they were just treating it like an extended This American Life episode and accidentally made it mysterious and compelling to begin with but didn't have the material to bear that out to the end. It overall felt more like a story about the case itself rather than an examination into what really happened... if that makes any sense to people. And in that light, it delivered pretty well.

 

That said, I did get a bit bothered by how Sarah Koenig handled the racism element of this case (as discussed above) and I'm bummed that was not laid out more, particularly for people who might not fully understand how that works but could conceivably be convinced of it. I definitely want to see what they do next, but I think that this was actually a poor choice of first story both because of the obsessive personal research people on the internet did and because it didn't pace well with the episodes.

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Re:Serial


 


In conversations regarding Serial I often seem to run into the idea of 'Well, if not Sarah Koenig then who will tell this story?'. I find it problematic, the implication being that all stories must be told. This is an idea that I object to rather strongly.


 


The collective ‘we’ only seem to get high and mighty about this when the story in question has been sold to us effectively. We don’t care about interviewing the parents of some missing girl from a farm community outside of Fresno and we certainly don’t come back years later and try to interview her friends and family. No. We only care when it’s easy to care because the story excites us, and then we have the audacity to pretend that we are upholding some grand dedication to truth and justice by demanding it be told to us. It’s ugly, privileged, middle/upper crust bullshit and I hate it.


 


Lets look at this from the perspective of the Lee family, who declined to be interviewed. Their options suck. They didn't want this but now have the choice between having every aspect of their lives and pain picked at by the myriad fumbling fingers of millions of anonymous internet people, while, at the same time, having their culture and community criticized, OR they can sit back and watch as some white-lady outsider parades their daughter’s memory around for the amusement of that same faceless mob. Their kid was murdered and they have to go on living with that every day, but now people are coming out of the woodwork to play amateur detective and make moral judgments on nothing but hearsay, half forgotten memories and whatever a google search will turn up. This must be a fucking nightmare for the them.


 


On the other side we have Adnan who certainly does seem like a good candidate for an Innocence Project review- his case was poorly handled; as are quite a few cases. Fine. Sure. Do that. Hopefully he didn't actually do it. This must be a beacon of hope for his family who probably see this as an opportunity to get their son back. Good for them, at least their kid is still alive.


 


Who hurts more? Is that a useful way to look at how a story should be told? I have no idea. But the question does inform my overarching opinion that Sarah Koenig, whom I consider to be a capable (if not a little sheltered) journalist, seems to be using these people’s stories to make points about things like reasonable doubt and the fallibility of our justice system. I absolutely agree that points like that should be made but I dislike the fact that, after all is done, she has basically ended up using the pain of minority communities as a tool to communicate her message to her audience, an audience who does not seem to have a lot of overlap with those communities.


 


 


Edit: I [could be/often am] wrong in my thinking about this.


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I'm going to repost what I wrote in the Idle Thumbs 189 topic since I'd like to respond to Brodie's message above which came directly after.

 

I thought the few times Sarah touched on racism were surprisingly quickly dismissed.  For how readily she questioned most everyone's stories it was odd to seemingly brush off that idea and also conclude that the police work was generally solid when most of what we heard seemed to indicate the opposite.  

 

I agree with Danielle that its interesting to look at the criminal justice system and disheartening to see how awful it all is portrayed.  The only solace I can take is that apparently a train wreck of a case like this doesn't seem to be the norm.  My question to some of the folks who have serious issues with the existence of the program though is what changes would you have made to make it acceptable or should it just not have existed?

 

I think the real life crime angle and fact that there is an actual victim with a family aware of the podcast gives me serious qualms about how much I enjoyed listening.  Still, I'm interested in seeing where they go for next season and if they address some of the issues raised from this year.

 

---

 

Brodie,

 

I think you raised a great point about how not only is it possibly very painful for the Lee family to have this all brought up even if they aren't following along (which I'd assume they aren't) but also some of the sweeping generalizations about the community are likely infuriating.  Playing slight devil's advocate though if say the DNA evidence shows that it was the serial killer or somehow exonerates Adnan wouldn't they prefer that to locking up an innocent man?  That may be presumptive seeing that its not a guarantee that the evidence will even be able to be tested or a match for any of the suspects but its probably an outcome many listeners are hoping for.

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I get the feeling there may be a bonus episode of Adnan's case at some point later. Maybe there will be work to try to get his appeal and maybe some other info might turn up. It seems like there were some paths that could be explored more but Sarah had exhausted her resources.

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Saturday Night Live did a spoof on this past episode:

 

Is Serial really this big? I know it would almost assuredly be big the type of person that writes for SNL, but I'm surprised they got the green light to do such a specific parody. It seems to me that this sketch might have some broad appeal, but the majority of jokes would be completely lost on people who don't listen to the show (the end probably being the most obvious example).

 

I might be completely off base here, but it struck me as surprising.

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Well it was the most popular podcast in the world, so I would say that garners at least some attention from other media.

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There's a lot going on with that interview--so much so that I find it difficult to unpack it all.

 

Jay paints a very believable portrait of Adnan as a killer, assuming he's being (mostly) truthful. But that he blames Sarah Koenig for any perceived vilification is just kind of breaking my brain; he was given multiple opportunities to tell his side of the story (and Koenig even offered to follow up with him after The Intercept published its interview).

 

Is Sarah Koenig liable for the behavior of Reddit?

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Now the prosecutor has come forward to talk about the case to The Intercept. I don't believe for one second that Koenig and company didn't attempt to contact him multiple times. Given what we know about Koenig's reporting, that's just not believable. So that put me in the mood of already being skeptical of what he had to say. But he's super confident in his narrative.

Sidenote: I'm quite curious how the Intercept got these interviews. It's...convenient. As a new publication, the biggest thing it needs is for people to know it exists. And securing extended interviews with two people who wouldn't talk to the biggest podcast in history is a massive coup. And weird. Each of these men likely had a dozen outlets or more reach out to them, but they chose a relatively unknown publication to talk with.

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Last year, radio host and producer Sarah Koenig revisited the case in the hopes of finding a miscarriage of justice.

 

Oh, did she?

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Sidenote: I'm quite curious how the Intercept got these interviews. It's...convenient. As a new publication, the biggest thing it needs is for people to know it exists. And securing extended interviews with two people who wouldn't talk to the biggest podcast in history is a massive coup. And weird. Each of these men likely had a dozen outlets or more reach out to them, but they chose a relatively unknown publication to talk with.

 

The initial interview came about from Jay's lawyer approaching the reporter.

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Researchers found in a recent study that false memories, even extremely detailed false memories of committing a crime, could be introduced into people's memories believably in as little as 3 hours during a police style interrogation.

 

The article specifically notes Serial at the end, but its applicable to any case where witness testimony is the primary evidence and that witness has spent multiple hours in police interrogations. 

 

Also, that whole thing is just scary as shit, that false memories can be taken up that quickly. 

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Yeah, false memories are real shitty. I remember the lesson we had on it during Psych 101. They told us about a case in Britain where extensive interrogations eventually convinced a father to think he had raped both of his daughters. There was also a big case (Which became big because of the monumental screw-up it was by the police) here in Sweden where a young man woke up to his girlfriend being stabbed to death in their kitchen. He flees the apartment down to his fathers apartment and calls the police from there, seeing his girlfriends murderer walk away from the building. Once the cops actually show up they arrest the boyfriend and just take him away. Don't even bother looking for another murderer despite being told the direction he went.

 

So, after a few months of isolation and interrogations where the police forced him to watch pictures of his girlfriends body, he started to actually believe that he might have done it. Why else would the police be so determined that it was him (Even after finding blood from another man on the scene)? Why else wouldn't they have found someone else after so long? 

 

The murderer struck again however, causing the police to find a connection (the two victims and the murderer were foster kids who grew up together) and the boyfriend was set free.

Worst thing is that the second murder and those months in interrogation could have been prevented if they had just sent one cop to check out the direction the murderer had walked in after the first murder. As he had been seen, he had assumed he was going to get caught at any time, so had just walked over to a bus stop (covered in blood) and sat down waiting for the cops to pick him up.

 

It just shows how dangerous it is when law enforcement are so enormously sure of who did it that they disregard every other possibility.

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False memories/confessions are a huge problem. There was a case down in Austin, TX that's commonly known as the yogurt shop murders. Someone killed 4 teenage girls in a yogurt shop in 1991. The case has never actually been solved, but police have recorded confessions from more than 50 people who have all claimed to have committed the murders.

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I listened to the whole thing over a week or so during our wonderful New England snow storms. At first I didn't realise that this was based on a true case, not really knowing anything about it.

 

As a scientist, the way that the prosecution handled its evidence drove me nuts, particularly the cherry-picking of a few cell phone call records that happened to support their case, when there were plenty more that didn't. It sounds like this is commonplace, because someone (a detective I think) said they were more interested in building a case than finding the truth... this is outrageous to me.

 

If we presume innocence until proven otherwise, and that people might not tell the truth in the witness stand (shocking I know), then based on the evidence Jay is at least as likely to be the murderer as Adnan. He freely admits to helping bury the body and led the cops to the car, and admitted lying to the police.

 

If the case for the defence rests on a butt dial, then I know that I've butt-dialed at least a few more people than I've murdered :P.

 

It seems unlikely that Adnan will ever be proven innocent, and he could well be guilty, but I have to agree that the prosecution fucked up, and he should have been aquitted based on their case

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As a scientist, the way that the prosecution handled its evidence drove me nuts, particularly the cherry-picking of a few cell phone call records that happened to support their case, when there were plenty more that didn't. It sounds like this is commonplace, because someone (a detective I think) said they were more interested in building a case than finding the truth... this is outrageous to me.

 

Outrageous, but given the media I've consumed about police in America and potentially elsewhere (mostly radio podcasts like This American Life etc.) it seems like their impression is that their job is to catch criminals. It's entirely not, their job is to protect citizens. But their job performance is being logged as how many people they successfully incarcerate, which incentivises quick police work, erring more towards taking someone as guilty and then gathering a mass of evidence quickly rather than trying to separate out the relevant useful evidence.

 

Make no mistake, I am totally not the best source of info on this, I'm repeating thoughts... third hand? Having heard podcasts about the topic, but it's something I could see as being a misguided attempt to crack down on crime gone wrong particularly when police are not conscious of their biases. The last two episode of This American Life talked in depth about how the police operate and are really interesting listens if you'd like to hear a more direct source.

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Got around to listening to the first episode on the way to work today. It's gonna be an interesting season, to say the least. I'm a little bummed about the subject (Bowe Bergdahl), since I liked that Serial S1 focused on a story that I hadn't heard anything about before. That said, it's still gonna be an interesting season, especially since I'm fascinated by military codes/protocols

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