[Media Clusterf**k] And so it begins.In the 36 hours since South Salt Lake police arrested 21-year-old Esar Met on suspicion of murdering little Hser Nay Moo (right), the mainstream media have gone ape shit for even the tiniest shred of drama to tell this story.
It's no surprise, especially given the cultural complexities involved in covering the story. There's a language barrier, and the families involved are recent refugees from a distant and tumultuous country (Burma, now known as Myanmar). It's clear the members of both the victim's and the suspect's families know nothing about the U.S. legal system, so it's suddenly open season on these people beset by tragedy. Nobody is about to "lawyer up," that's for sure.
To wit, this latest piece of crap: Today's Deseret Morning News, KSL radio and Salt Lake Tribune all have sketchy comments from the murder suspect's mother, Ra He Mar. Having fled from Myanmar, then having finally gotten out of a Thai refugee camp where she lived for 18 years, the woman has been in the United States for two weeks. (Though the Trib is reporting one month.) Whatever. She's scarcely had time to get over jet lag. Ra He Mar can barely utter a word in English, was interviewed through a interpretor and has no grasp of the American legal system. And surprise: she says her son is a good boy. [Esar Met] "had never run afoul of the law before or displayed any behavior indicating he was capable of killing," according to the Tribune's account from his mother.
Well, it's all done because by damn, some editor at a desk decided you need to know. Does this kind of media scramble strike anyone else as fairly cannibalistic? (Holly Mullen)
