How a Grad Student Scooped Amanda Knox Trial Journalist Andrea Vogt

Those who closely follow the Amanda Knox trial will most likely read an article by Andrea Vogt, a freelancer who frequently writes for Seattlepi.com, which contains information about the U.S. State Department and their monitoring of Knox’s trial. This article is written as if it some sort of revelation. She writes that these cables, “reveal that U.S. embassy officials in Rome reported to the Secretary of State’s Office in Washington, D.C., on a regular basis regarding ‘Amcit Amanda Knox’ (American citizen Amanda Knox).”

For anyone knowledgeable, this “revelation” is no revelation at all. In fact, a graduate student with blog on Google had published State Department cables with the exact same information (and actually much more than Andrea Vogt provides) in June of 2010! You can visit his blog and see for yourself.

It seems in the last year Andrea Vogt can’t seem to buy a scoop. Earlier this year, Vogt wrote an article supposedly revealing that Amanda Knox was recorded saying “I was there” in reference to being at the murder scene. The truth, however, was that the statement taken in context unequivocally showed that she was not referring to the murder scene, but to her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment. Even the judges who presided over Knox’s case realized this. Andrea Vogt, who attended most of sessions in Amanda Knox’s trial, was either being blatantly dishonest or she was so incompetent that she didn’t even realize she was reporting old news.

Maybe Andrea Vogt’s next scoop will be that Frank Sfarzo’s blog, Perugia-Shock, which covered every session of the Amanda Knox trial, was taken down due to a court order in Italy (as previously reported here).

Amanda Knox’s appeal continues this weekend where the Head of Perugia’s flying squad, Monica Napoleoni, is expected to testify.