Opinion ID: 1247201
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Nature and Extent of Publicity

Text: The disappearance of the child, the search effort, and the discovery of the child's body a month and one-half later generated extensive media coverage. Some of it was in connection with information disseminated by the Logan Police Department. Other coverage was in connection with efforts to find the missing child, spearheaded by the volunteer committee. Additional news stories came from direct contacts by reporters with the parents of the infant. The three television stations in Salt Lake City which can be viewed in Cache County covered the events as follows: Television station KUTV, channel 2, carried eighty-four news items on thirty-four different days; KTVX, channel 4, carried thirty-six news items on twenty-five different days; KSL, channel 5, carried thirty-eight news items on twenty-five different days. Newspaper coverage included forty-five news articles on forty-two different days in The Herald Journal, Logan's daily newspaper. The Cache Citizen, a Cache Valley weekly newspaper, published five feature articles. Moreover, two local radio stations carried numerous accounts of the events. Not only was the media coverage extensive, some of it also carried implications and innuendos of defendant's complicity in the child's disappearance. References were made to defendant's becoming uncooperative, that he was always the key suspect, and that he persistently denied involvement. Contrast was drawn between his tears and the real ones belonging to one of the volunteers. The statement was made that he acted every inch the grieving father. It was further reported that he even threatened to kill the detective who cracked the case. Moreover, some of the information disseminated by the police was equally troublesome, viz., that defendant had become uncooperative, that police wanted answers, that details related him to a California abduction at knifepoint and a police investigation of a California child abuse case where an infant sustained severe injuries, that the child's mother had passed a polygraph but that defendant twice refused to take one, that defendant was hostile to police, and that he was always the key suspect.