Not innocent enough?

Okay, so yesterday I sounded off my disgust at the media for the lack of coverage being given to the death of Sean Taylor, relative to the kind of wall to wall coverage of Michael Vick's legal troubles back in August. A couple of our loyal readers chimed in with their comments, both with interesting points, one of which really got me processing the issue again. I've come to some new conclusions, so I figured that rather than burying them in a long comment to yesterday's post, I'd lay them out with a follow-up post today.

You can go check the comments in full out for yourself, but what got me started was Mr. Stevens' suggestion - in summary, that the primary cause of the disparity in the coverage was the disparity in the relative fame of the two men. He suggested that Vick's death would be an enormous story, presumably similar to his legal troubles. I think there's some truth there. I think Vick's dying under similar circumstances would dominate the media more so than Taylor's death has to date. However, something told me it wasn't quite that simple, that there was more to it. As I thought this through, and simultaneously listened to Day 2 of the coverage, it occurred to me that, in my opinion, Vick's death would not be the kind of story that his legal troubles were. In order to have that kind of story, I think you'd need to see someone like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady murdered. Now, in order to avoid getting this discussion pulled off the tracks by a conclusion that last statement might lead you to, you could replace Manning and Brady with, say Tim Duncan, or Tiger Woods.

Why do I believe that to be the case? Well, when I think about the criminal cases that have dominated the national attention span over my lifetime, I find at least one of 3 things to be true - either the alleged perpetrator is particularly famous/noteworthy (Vick, OJ Simpson), the criminal act itself is particularly heinous or out of the ordinary (Vick again, the DC snipers), or the victim is perceived as particularly sympathetic/innocent (pick any one of many child abductions/murders). Perhaps there are other aspects of crimes that capture our attention, but it seems to me that these are the 3 dominant ones. The reason Sean Taylor's death has not been the kind of drop everything media circus that Vick's legal troubles were is, in my opinion, because none of these 3 things are true in this case. It's not because Sean Taylor isn't famous enough, it's because he's not perceived to be innocent enough.

Let me lay out what I'm looking at here. First, let's look at the facts that we have that precede Taylor's murder. Fact number one is that Sean Taylor does have a criminal past. He's had brushes with the law, had his car shot up during his first year in the NFL, and was currently on probation as a result of guilty plea after being charged with armed assault in the summer of 2005. A second fact, one that has gotten significantly less attention from the media, is that prior to Monday's events, those closest to Taylor believed that, since the birth of his daughter 18 months ago, he had made a break from that past and was very clearly moving in the right direction. That doesn't make it fact that this was the case, but it does mean that either those closest to him were particularly naive, or there had been some noticeable change. A third significant fact here is that apparently Taylor's home had been broken into a week prior to his shooting, with nothing being taken, and a knife left on his bed.

There are other facts in play, but these are the ones I see as most prominent. The facts in the case have led to some assumptions, and that is where things get dangerous in my view. Significant assumption #1 is based on my third fact, and that is the assumption that this wasn't a random burglary or act of violence, and that Taylor was specifically being targeted, though perhaps not for murder. That, I think is a fair assumption, but it is still just an assumption, and I would really prefer to see the media dealing in facts rather than assumptions. However, that particular assumption by itself doesn't really color the issue to a large degree. Where the case does pick up color is when you take that assumption and combine it with my first fact, Taylor's criminal past, to get to major assumption #2 - that something Taylor was involved with in his unsavory past (or perhaps even the present) resulted in him being targeted.

Let me be clear, I don't think anyone believes at this point that he deserved to be killed, but I get a strong sense that, even in the absence of anything resembling a concrete fact, most people believe that he was targeted as a result of a poor choice he made at some point, and thus he bears some responsibility for what happened. That, if true, would make him considerably less sympathetic than someone like Manning, Brady, Duncan, or Woods, who at least publicly have no connection to the kind of criminal element that Taylor ran with in his early life and for at least his first year or so in the NFL. They would likely be presumed to as totally innocent victims if they died under similar circumstances. Michael Vick might have fallen into a similar category prior to his legal dealings, but I'm not sure that would have been the case. While he had personally kept his record clean, it was known that he was still running with the pretty rough crowd that he grew up around.

So, going back, is the second assumption fair? Well, let's just say I wouldn't be shocked to find out that it's accurate. But the simple fact of the matter is that there is nothing concrete to substantiate it as of yet, and so I have a problem with the extent to which I see the assumption coloring media and public reaction. The simple fact of the matter is that you don't have make a bad decision to find yourself as a target of evil. And even were I to concede that this was linked to something in his unsavory past, those kinds of elements could easily decide to target him as a result of him trying to turn things around and break away from that life.

So that's where I sit. Taylor has been branded as unsympathetic and somewhat responsible for his situation before the facts of the case have even begun to come in, and that's coloring the extent to which the media and the public view his death as a tragedy. Only one of the 3 radio hosts I listen to on a daily basis made Taylor's story the dominant theme of their show today, and that was Jim Rome. Not so coincidentally, he's the one host who has been adamant about refusing to speculate and jump to conclusions before we get a better picture of what actually happened.

Can I really blame the public for branding Taylor as an unsavory character whose own actions led to this ugly situation? Honestly, I can't. That is what happens when you make poor choices and have some very public falls. It's an image Taylor would have had a hard time shedding now matter how much longer he had lived. However, I hold the media to a higher standard, and would like to see a larger part of it showing some responsibility by letting the facts, not assumptions, define the story.