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City Press Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox: How to handle the media circus

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

October 4, 2011 | 3 min read

Paul Smith, a crisis management consultant at Citypress, believes a little empathy could go a long way as freed Amanda Knox faces the spotlight of the world's media.

One of my first ever PR clients at a previous agency was Louise Woodward’s mum.

Sue Woodward never asked for any advice regarding her daughter’s case and never spoke about it.

She was a marketing manager. If someone hadn't told me about her link to one of the highest profile court cases of the 90s, I'd never have known.

A year later, she and her husband were accused – and cleared – of defrauding her convicted daughter’s appeal fund.

Family scandal, marketing skills, accusations of fraud; she should probably run for Parliament.

She hasn’t.

But whatever she’s doing now, last night’s dramatic Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito appeal verdicts in Italy can’t have failed to remind Sue Woodward of how such a case divides opinions and ruins lives.

Last night’s media feast of confused verdict, actual verdict, dodgy Daily Mail publishing of a pre-prepared guilty write-up and the ensuing stream of opinion was full of many emotions, including empathy from social media users for murder victim Meredith Kercher’s family.

Both the Woodwards and the family of baby Matthew Eappen, who died in Louise Woodward's care, suffered the media scrutiny and public assumptions made about their feelings and actions.

All were accused of seemingly losing sight of the fact that someone had died while a televised media circus turned their lives upside down and expected them to act in a certain way under pressure.

It’s hard to imagine what it feels like to be embroiled in either of these cases, to know what you may or may not say amid the grief or relief. These people aren’t CEOs, TV stars, politicians.

But a little empathy goes a long way. If you have it.

We talk about humility and empathy when we media train clients. Not because you can teach it, but because you can’t.

Fake it and people will know, but if it genuinely exists then say what you feel. The public needs to see it.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have a lot of airtime coming up - well, one more than the other – it will be interesting to see how many times they remember the Kerchers when talking about ‘their nightmare’.

City Press Amanda Knox

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