By Steve Rhodes
“When I awoke last Saturday morning to the news of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, I realized that the moment had come: the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), the federal prison where he died, was about to get its fifteen minutes of fame,” Aviva Stahl writes in “Why Federal Prisons Like The One Where Epstein Was Held Aren’t Held Accountable” for the Columbia Journalism Review.
“As a freelance investigative reporter who frequently covers the prison system, I’d spent years trying to pitch stories about that facility, often without success. Last summer, I managed to publish an investigation into conditions at the MCC on the website Gothamist. “The story documented that MCC was overcrowded and understaffed, plagued by vermin and overflowing toilets, dogged by allegations of corruption and abuse, and beset by an almost total lack of medical care. None of that got much attention at the time. But as soon as news of Epstein’s death started circulating, so did my piece.
“Of course, editorial interest ebbs and flows with the news cycle, and in the post-Obama era, perhaps more than ever, investigative reporting about (seemingly) non-Trump-related federal problems is a tough sell. But the almost total dearth of interest in MCC can be traced back decades; it isn’t just a reflection of journalistic myopia that’s plagued the American media landscape under the current president. It’s also a reflection of the flawed metrics that newsrooms use to determine when jail and prison stories are ‘newsworthy.'”
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Posted on August 24, 2019
