Savage Portrayals

January 1, 2014

Byfield brings bifocal vision to her analysis of media treatment of the Central Park Jogger story, which she covered in her first career as a journalist for the New York Daily News. The woman iconically referred to as the "Central Park Jogger" was savagely beaten and raped during a late-night run in Central Park in 1989. Shortly thereafter, five teenage boys--not coincidentally African American and Hispanic--were apprehended and confessed to the crime. The problem is that they were innocent and their confessions had been coerced. Tragically, the young men all served substantial jail time before a known violent rapist confessed that he was the actual perpetrator and his claim was substantiated by DNA evidence. From her current perspective as a sociologist (St. John's Univ.), Byfield reexamines the horrific event in light of after-acquired evidence and scholarly methodology, particularly content analysis of news coverage, and she tells a revised story in which issues of race, class, and media bias taint the justice system. VERDICT A chilling, ultimately instructive portrayal of savage injustice. This book would be best read alongside of, and in contradistinction to, Trisha Meili's I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility.--Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown

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