The ‘Daily Wire’ Team Is at It Again With ‘Convicting a Murderer’ Copaganda
As always, the Daily Wire is here to have us asking why something is happening. Launching on Daily Wire+, the streaming platform of nightmares, is a new show called Convicting a Murderer, from host Candace Owens, all about the case presented to audiences in the Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer. Focusing on the murder Teresa Halbach, the Daily Wire+ series is meant to show evidence that the Netflix series left out.
Halback was a freelance photographer who went missing when she went to take pictures at Avery’s Auto Salvage. Her murder would eventually get placed on Steven Avery, as well as his teenage nephew Brendan Dassey, and the Making a Murderer docuseries focused on a tactic sometimes used by those in power to persuade someone to admit to something they didn’t do. This was shown through how the police talked to Dassey, and the series as a whole highlighted the wrongful conviction that Avery served jail time for back in 1985 prior to his release in 2003.
Making a Murderer was not without controversy, with a lot of people questioning the evidence presented to audiences. Those who think that Avery and Dassey committed the crime and deserve to be in jail are quite often those on the side of the police, because while watching the series, it is obvious that the case as a whole was botched to fit their narrative. As our Princess Weekes had written prior to the release of season 2 of the series, the issue with the constant spotlight on this case is that no one seems to have Halbach’s family in mind or finding who brutally murdered her. What the Daily Wire is doing with this new series is just pushing the blame onto what police said instead of making sure the truth is out here.
Of course the Daily Wire wants to defend the police
The Daily Wire has made their intentions very clear, right from the title, positioned as a direct argument to Making a Murderer’s implication that the conviction was manufactured by police. They’re playing to their audience of conservatives who just want to see any criticism of the police refuted, whether it’s true or not. The case itself had very questionable things happen to seemingly make it look like a perfect fit for Avery and Dassey and they used Dassey’s intellectual disability to their advantage. Continuing to focus this case on how the idea that the police were right, rather than focusing on the victim, as the Daily Wire is clearly doing, is ridiculous.
Convicting a Murderer, in its premiere and first couple of episodes, seems to just put out more of the same information but just with other people’s opinions on it and claiming that as fact. What Making a Murderer did was let you come up with your own conclusion on where you thought that the case fell and whether or not you thought they were innocent or guilty, much like the podcast Serial did with the case of Adnan Syed.
From what I can tell, as I have not watched the series, it seems as if Convicting a Murderer is all about the opinions of those at the Daily Wire and less about the actual facts of the case. Making a Murderer isn’t perfect, but it at least gave us a wide range of information to go off of and explore to come up with our own conclusions. In the reviews I’ve read for Convicting a Murderer, that doesn’t seem to be the case but that’s not that surprising given the involvement of the Daily Wire and Candace Owens in the Shawn Rech directed series. In fact, if you look at all the promo pictures for the series, it’s mostly pictures of Owens, so that should tell you all you need to know.
(featured image: Netflix)
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