Trial By Media (Part II)

Muller concluded his article: "The hard part is it's Christmas," she said. "There's not even money for a small tree or small gifts. They're waiting (her kids) and waiting."

Which, unfortunately, was true.
The question, however, is whose responsibility is that?
It is a difficult thing to look at a woman like Deborah Vasquez, someone whose path has been more difficult than most people's, and ask: Why haven't you taken work?

It is so much easier to regurgitate her claim, as Muller did: "Those who would talk to me, after they found out I was involved in a confrontation with Grant Woods, they dropped me like a hot potato."

The real dilemma, however, does not involve the antagonism between Vasquez and Carey.

The big-picture problem centers on the unquestioning coverage of Vasquez and her complaints by Arizona journalists--journalists who provided the cover that allowed County Attorney Richard Romley to bury Rob Carey.

Starting with Vasquez's petty and false allegations on the MLK luncheon, and with the press as a shield, Romley roamed the state of Arizona looking for anything, anything at all on Carey.

Romley accumulated tiny, isolated bits of data so he could write a legal memorandum that had been accumulated snowflake by snowflake, until he had a snowball.

But it was the press that provided the blinding white blizzard of allegations that buried Carey.

Rob Carey got in trouble not because he is guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, but because his friend Grant Woods is an elected official whose job is to lead the Attorney General's Office, not shovel snow.