Experts say public demand drove up Dulos case coverage
From the first days following the May 2019 disappearance of New Canaan mother of five Jennifer Dulos, public interest in the case was intense.
News organizations raced to meet the demand.
Reporters milled around the tony Connecticut suburbs — New Canaan, Farmington, Avon — where the drama unfolded.
Dozens of journalists, photographers and cameramen filled courtrooms at each appearance of defendants charged in connection with the disappearance.
Amid the frenzy and as the case reached the oneyear mark on Sunday, how did the media do its job?
Experts described a feedback loop of sorts in which intense interest in the case generated more and more coverage of it.
Asked to give a grade for coverage of the case, Rich Hanley, an associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University, said the media deserves an A for its tenacity in pursuing information about it — but a B for presentation.
“It seemed like there were stories that had little content at some point, in the sense that they were just trying to keep the story alive, churning out stories day to day when not much had happened, filling space on web pages, space on TV shows with little movement or forward progress on the actual details of the case,” he said.
Hanley said that’s no surprise given how popular coverage of the case was
with the public.
“In the era of click-bait and the need to draw eyeballs to the story, I think you’ll see more heightened or intensified coverage of cases like this, because it’s what the audience wants, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.
The popularity shaped news organizations’ coverage. Hearst Connecticut Media assigned a reporter to follow the case as a full-time beat for months, complemented by other reporters who would check court files daily to keep on top of developments and a freelance writer to cover other aspects of the investigation.
The case also attracted attention from media outlets outside Connecticut, with New York TV stations and newspapers reporting frequently on the case, which attracted new media as well.
At heavy.com, a New York Citybased breaking news site, posts on the Dulos case were popular, according to Ben Doody, the managing editor at the site, which assigned a staffer to follow developments and write posts about the case.
“Relative to other regional stories, it was widely read,” he said. “It wasn't among our most-read stories of the year. But it was clear early on that readers would be interested in the story, and that interest was reflected in how many people consumed our coverage.”
Karen Burke, an associate professor of communication, media and screen studies at Southern Connecticut State University, said the Dulos story was “an easy sell” because it combined hard news, human interest, and “had all the makings of a true crime murder mystery mini-series. Historically, us Americans devour such stories.”
But aside from just reporting the facts, Burke said, news coverage “used deliberate techniques to capture the audience’s attention, which inevitably swayed public opinion: prominent and repetitive placement of the story, use of sensational headlines, descriptive adjectives, carefully selected sound bites, photographs and footage focused attention on the couple’s divorce, parental status, Ivy League educations, wealth and privilege rather than solely the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos.”
“Framing the narrative, painting the picture so to speak, generated meaning. As such, pure objectivity was unobtainable,” Burke said. “It is the nature of the beast. For good or bad, the news coverage generated meaning, which influenced and shaped attitudes, beliefs and perceptions about who did what and why in this case.”
Alan Bruce, a professor and chairman of sociology, criminal justice and anthropology at Quinnipiac, said his “real concern is with the excessive media focus on violent offenses and the potential it has upon people’s perceptions of crime and subsequently support for what we do about it.”
“While this is a truly tragic event, it is relatively uncommon (and this is part of the reason it got so much media attention),” Bruce said. “There is a lot of data indicating the public really overestimates how much violent crime we have and the focus on the least common causes of crime help drive this. With inaccurate beliefs, there tends to be support for policies, especially punitive policies, that don’t accurately reflect ‘typical crime.’”
Hanley said the way such cases get covered simply reflects consumer desires. “That’s just the sorry state of the American audience and the media that follows the American audience’s eyeballs.”
“I would hope that the audience — and media will follow what the audience wants — demand more serious, sober reporting on issues that matter to more people in a way that impacts their everyday life,” he said. “And with the campaign coming up at the presidential level, that’s never been more important.”