Media Whores

We take the media to task, often, for their willingness to prostitute the ideals of a free press to the service of political ends. One might wonder, "Where did journalism go wrong?" Evidently, right at the beginning:

• Prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled documents that suggested students and staff with Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project arranged a visit from a female student as a "treat" for a prisoner, in addition to making unspecified promises, before he recanted his testimony in a 1993 murder and armed robbery case.
  
  [...] The memos include suggestions that Francisco Vicente, who testified against Serrano but later recanted to the students, was upset that a private detective who works with Protess failed to come through with unspecified "considerations."
  
  
• Protess said he was unaware of the e-mail describing the female former student as a "treat."

Well yeah, you probably want to go into full denial mode after that one. Offering up a female student to a prisoner as a bit of a "treat" to alleviate a hetero sex-less existence in prison in order to elicit testimony - that doesn't sound as good as "the state framed this completely innocent man and aspiring doctor."