I regret listening to Serial.
Like so many, I found myself going over and over the evidence for and against Adnan Syed, analyzing the clues and reviewing the testimony. I felt like a detective. It was fun. Then I realized that Serial had turned the grizzly murder of a teenage girl in Baltimore into entertainment.
There was so many other cases that Sarah Koenig could have focused on. Hundreds if not thousands of people in this country are wrongfully convicted each year because of racism, prosecutorial misconduct, incompetence, and inadequate funding for defense lawyers for the indigent. They are by no means easy to investigate, but with enough digging, a reporter can prove, or at least strongly demonstrate, that there was a miscarriage of justice.
Koenig didn't want to take on any of these types of cases. She wanted one that raised more questions than it answered, where rather than clarifying and edifying, she would sow doubt and uncertainty. As it turns out, this was a strategy for success. It enabled millions of listeners to pretend they were Hercule Poirot or feel like they were in the middle of a mystery novel. Serial was a great whodunit. But real life isn't fiction. We don't have the right to be endlessly titillated by a young girl's death. That's the stuff of crime recreation shows, not real journalism.
If Koenig had been able to get to the bottom of the case, it would have been different. Yes, we would have enjoyed the narrative as she investigated the case, but in the end, we would have had some level of certainty. We would not have been able to go on endlessly speculating about the case. Koenig's reporting would have revealed the truth. It would have shone light instead of cast shadows.
The truth is reporters get calls about cases like Syed's all the time. Maybe we are too quick to dismiss some of them, but we also know don't pursue them because we know they are beyond our expertise to investigate. Reporters aren't trained to collect forensic evidence. And they don't have law degrees to assess how that evidence fits into the code of statutes.
In cases where there is racism, misconduct, or incompetence, there is enough of a paper trail to at least strongly suggest there's a travesty of justice. You will have a judge condemning the tactics of prosecutors. A witness will recant his or her testimony. A police officer involved in the case will turn out to have lied in other criminal investigations. And sometimes, outside groups run DNA tests that exonerate the convicted.
Koenig didn't have any of this. She didn't even have the cooperation of the police or prosecutors. The victim's family wouldn't talk to her either. She should have known from the start her reporting would only lead to a morass.
At times, I felt like I was listening in on one of Koenig's therapy sessions where she was obsessively going over the same problems again and again. If not neuroticism, there was an excessiveness to Koenig's reporting. She seemed not to really want to get to the bottom of what happened. We overlook this because she's a talented storyteller who could turn the roiling debate inside her head into entertainment for the rest of us.
I only wish that all of Koenig's energy and commitment had been turned toward a better cause. She really could have helped someone and remedied an injustice.