Amanda Knox, Troy Davis, and Accountability in a Digital Age

Today I have a blog post up on CNN.com about the Amanda Knox murder trial, and where it fits within a long-standing American news tradition of hawking tales of pretty white female perpetrators and victims.

In the last graph, I pose a question that remains up for grabs: does Knox’s acquittal in Italian appeals court portend that accountability in well-publicized trials is now, more than ever, susceptible to global intervention – not just by lawyers and mainstream journalists, but also by social media users, citizen journalists and, as the New York Times intriguingly reports today, public relations firms?