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Did Amanda Knox kill her roommate? I have no idea, but I do know that there has been a media circus surrounding the trial since day one.

Besides for Knox’s guilty verdict and 26-year sentence in Italy, the biggest issue to come out of the trial is the media attention to the case and whether it influenced the jurors:-

• Was Amanda Knox guilty, a victim of anti-American sentiments, a puppet caught in a war between fact and frenzy, some of that, none of all or all of that?

Many Americans have been calling the trial unfair, biased and are doubting the Italian justice system. On the other side of the pond, Italians (and other Europeans) are calling Americans ignorant, stupid and unfair for doubting another first-world nation’s justice system.

I read one headline over the weekend that says it all, “Amanda Knox: ‘She-Devil’ Or Victim Of Anti-Americanism?” What about “The New Face of Evil” as a title? Or, “Amanda Knox: guilty…but of what?”

Even in the case of Knox’s ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher as well, the media has played a huge role in his life too.

“The television described him as a womanizer, in fact he was shy and introverted,” said Saverio Pinetti Mofetta, who has known Sollecito for 10 years, in an ABC news article.

What is so interesting about the entire media situation is the trial’s on-going theme on our soil: accidentally or on purpose, some Americans, who have been sympathetic to Knox, are denouncing a foreign justice system. Some even going as far as to say that Knox would have stood a better shot being tried in Iran.

As I’ve been reading bits on and off for the past few months about the Amanda Knox trial, I’ve often thought back to the days of the O.J. Simpson case. While, some people may have disagreed with the not-guilty verdict of that trial, very few, if any, attacked the entire American justice system all together.

Taking a similar situation and putting it on foreign land, those tables have turned.

The Seattle Pi, owned by Hearst Seattle Media, has cited this where, “national identity is putting a xenophobic twist on support for Amanda Knox. Some are even pledging to act on their distrust.”

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Monday, December 7, after the verdict was announced on previous Friday, the family of Amanda Knox, who is convicted in Italy of murdering her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher, on November 1, 2007, alongside her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, announced their intention to solicit the help and intervention of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in order to overturn the guilty verdict. Not only that, but the family made an appeal on Larry King Live Monday evening as well.

The media is a powerful tool and it has been known to bend things to it’s whim. That being said, some are questioning whether or not, there is a valid argument for the release of Amanda Knox, or if we are witnessing the result of intense media coverage.

An article on the Huffington Post points out that, yes, in extreme cases in “rouge” nations such as Iran and North Korea, extreme measures have been undertaken to release American citizens wrongly accused, or harshly condemned. For example, when the US called for the release of the Iranian-American NPR journalist Roxana Saberi, earlier this year, who was charge with espionage in Iran.

“Italy is not Iran or North Korea. Ms. Knox was not convicted in under an hour during a closed-door trial, as Saberi was,” said the Huffington Post.

And that’s an interesting take on the facts of the situation as well as the frenzy surrounding the case.

• How many things is Amanda Knox guilty of, if any at all?
• And furthermore, who is the victim here? Are there more than one?
• Did nicknames like ‘ Foxy Knoxy,’ ‘She Devil’ and ‘Amanda the Ripper‘ play a part in the outcome? If so, to what degree?
• Is this a case of a cultural divide gone horribly wrong and twisted into so many different knots that it doesn’t even look the same anymore?

I’m not a lawyer or someone who can claim to be intimate with this case, but even I can see this is one complicated mess and the media did, in fact, play a huge role in it.

On a side note, Gawker, while joking, did post up a rather crude, but on the mark article, about Americans going abroad, “How Not to Get Arrested When You’re Abroad: A Foxy Knoxy-Inspired Guide.” It’s worth a read, because as someone who was a student, who did, study abroad, ignorance isn’t bliss and it’s important to, not only, do your research ahead of time, but be a smart traveler too…for your own good.

Also, ABC News has a section on their website where you can read all their articles on the entire Amanda Knox trial from the beginning, here.

The Daily Beast also had a very thought-provoking article (or well series at this point) that documented the clear divisions in information from the courtroom to  the newsrooms, here.

Of all the articles covering the story the UK Telegraph, in their comments section,  had some of the most thought provoking tidbits on what people really think, here.

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Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’ . She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami(’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima or get a copy of the ‘Little Pink Book’ delivered to your Kindle.

Copyright © 2009 Sasha H. Muradali. All Rights Reserved.