The Murder Business: How the Media Turns Crime Into Entertainment and Subverts Justice - Hardcover

Crime stories fascinate the public. But between factual news stories, overblown "human interest" reports and salacious murder mystery exposes, it's difficult to tell where news ends and entertainment begins. Mark Fuhrman, best-selling author of Murder in Brentwood, explores this fine line and how it is increasingly being crossed, revealing new and shocking details on such highprofile cases as JonBenet Ramsey, Martha Moxley and Chandra Levy. In The Murder Business, Fuhrman argues that the media's approach to covering crime ("if it bleeds, it leads") has allowed many criminals to get away with murder and impeded the search for justice. The Murder Business presents a compelling plea for journalists, cops, and citizens to demand higher ethical standards in the pursuit of justice.

Excerpt from The Murder Business

"Media and law enforcement work at cross-purposes. Law enforcement want to solve a case as fast as possible and put the guilty behind bars. The media want a case to drag on as long as humanly possible, and do all they can to extricate every last bit of drama, drop by bloody drop, in order to hold the attention of the millions of viewers who have gotten hooked. Law enforcement must abide by rules. The media make their own rules, and even then break them, or find ways to work loopholes into them. All that matters is ratings. If people knew how it’s done—how the media seduce, buy, bribe, and corrupt, like an inevitable, malignant cancer on a murder investigation—they might be too sickened to buy the next ticket to the carnival....The unfortunate truth is that today, each murder has many victims, and high-profile murders can hurt innocent people who get burned by the spotlight, whether or not they sought it out themselves. I learned that firsthand as a police witness in the O. J. Simpson trial, a wrenching experience that showed how the criminal justice system can be manipulated by money, power, politics, and fame. In twenty years of police work, I thought that the guilt or innocence of the suspect was all-important. Then I started covering high-profile murder cases, where ratings and profit often far outweigh the importance of facts."