The Media’s Role in Freeing the Innocent

Dale Helming was freed last December after serving 15 years in Missouri prisons for a crime evidence shows he didn’t commit. While it took attention from investigative journalists to set Helming free, dwindling media resources could mean that other injustices remain invisible. Lisa Marcus reports on the issue in The Crime Report:

Overall, however, media resources available for investigative reporting of criminal justice appear to be declining.

The number of stories about possible wrongful convictions is not keeping pace with that of potential cases reported to innocence projects.

… “It is unusual for the media to spend the kind of money that it takes to do the kind of investigative journalism that Terry Ganey, for example, has done on (Helming’s) case,” said Sean O’Brien, (Helming’s pro bono attorney).

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