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The Ennis Cosby affair: The media break all the rules of journalism for a. story
The son of one of the nation's most beloved entertainers is shot to death in Los Angeles. It taps into the national consciousness. Everyday citizens share in the family's grief.
The news media give the family sympathetic coverage. Yet as with most every other story involving celebrity, crime, sex and race, coverage of the Jan. 16 slaying of Bill Cosby's 27-year-old son, Ennis, raised questions of taste, propriety, ethics and excess.
Those questions included the wisdom of identifying a suspect solely by race, of honoring a police request not to name a possible witness, and of interviewing the grieving elder Cosby to boost ratings during "sweeps week."
Questions arose about the media stalking the Cosby home, about CNN showing a closeup of the dead body, for which the cable network apologized; about tabloid newspapers and TV shows offering rewards, and the academic question of why the killing of Bill Cosby's son deserved so much more coverage than that accorded all the other sons and daughters killed each day.
Adding sex to the mix was a revelation of an extramarital affair Cosby had 22 years ago, made public after an alleged attempt at extorting money from the entertainer. Three days after the killing of Ennis, Autumn Jackson, 22, and Jose Medina, 51, were arrested in an alleged plot to extort $24 million from Cosby.
To the mainstream media, the killing of Ennis Cosby was the...