Almost immediately after Nancy Grace finished announcing that the Ramsey case was closed, John Mark Karr went from being a child molester and murderer to an incomprehensible spotlight seeking nobody.

His false confession bewildered Americans, but even more bewildering to me than this attention-seeking crazy's false confession is why we were even talking about this guy in the first place.

The media loved Karr, because his creepy demeanor and ostentatious pronouncement of guilt was so outrageous that our fascination got the better of us. But through our predictable fascination with characters like Karr, the media escapes a significant purpose of its existence, which is to report issues of importance to the public.

This love affair with sensationalism is most appropriately applied to cases such as Karr's, where mysterious court cases are enhanced with enigmatic personalities. But what is lost in the end are the stories of actual importance.

I say this with no intention of belittling the death of JonBenét because murders are of serious importance. However, in the light of the countless unsolved mysteries in the United States to date, the over-reporting of JonBenét's case is and was overkill — and what's worse is that it's hardly unique.

With cases ranging as far back as the Lindbergh baby to the more recent O.J. Simpson trial, American fascination with these events has become a fixture of our legal culture despite its threat to that culture's sanctity.

By over-reporting court cases and mysteries such as JonBenét, American citizens become conditioned to accept trial by media rather than trial by jury. Through this acceptance, Americans find these celebrities guilty and punish them in the infamous court of public opinion, regardless of the truth.

No case is clearer than that of O.J. Simpson. Despite being cleared of charges by the California courts, the American public remained convinced of Simpson's guilt, as the Gallup poll showed immediately afterwards that only a third of Americans agreed with the verdict. To this day, few people outside of the legal profession care to challenge this synopsis, making Simpson essentially guilty, despite the verdict.

Michael Jackson experienced a similar phenomenon recently, when the Harris Poll reported that more than half of Americans believed that Jackson was guilty of child molestation, before the trial had even begun!

Again, though Jackson was cleared of the charges, Americans presumed guilt rather than innocence, and thus violated the very foundation of our legal system.

Had Karr faced charges, it is doubtful he would have experienced any form of a fair trial because his face, his actions and his bizarre behavior televised endlessly would have convicted him before he stepped foot in a courtroom.

But the concern for the right of these legal celebrities to a fair trial pales in comparison to the problem that over-reporting these cases poses for American democracy.

Despite the scholarly suggestion that litigiousness is tantamount, or at the very least beneficial to democracy, our fixation on such litigation is perhaps the greatest threat to our democracy.

The mere fact that Americans are aware of Michael Jackson's recent brush with the law but oblivious to the declaration of President Bush's NSA spying program as illegal serves as justification of the dangerous nature of this phenomenon.

Rather than report on the United States' secret CIA prisons, Americans found out that John Mark Karr went to the bathroom three times on a 15 hour flight from Thailand.

Rather than report on claims unheeded by Insurance Companies on the Gulf Coast, Americans found out that John Mark Karr had a glass of champagne on his flight to Los Angeles.

For every second spent on John Mark Karr, countless other stories went under-reported. The basis for the American media's existence was to give us access to issues of importance, not a showman's beverage selection.

If Americans desire the kind of democracy we believe we have, we need to ignore these stories of deranged sociopaths and ill-fated celebrities — they belong in the National Enquirer, not the New York Times.

Robert Phansalkar ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in languages and cultures of Asia and political science.