A bit of a rant.

So this girl that went missing in Croatia, since found dead and decomposing? Her family seem to have the complain dial set to 11.  Fair enough, some might say. However, comments such as this, from today's front page report on the Sydney Morning Herald website:

Ms Lapthorne's father, Dale, in Dubrovnik, said he was frustrated and upset by the lack of information in the report, which he called almost "childish" in its content. It provided only a description of the state of her body.

"It is purely descriptive and it says there is no visible sign of an act of death of how she might have died because the body is in such poor condition," he said.

"It is a false statement. The body is in such a bad state of decomposition that it cannot be determined whether foul play was involved or not. It didn't say that there is no evidence of foul play, of course there is no evidence of foul play. The body is in such a poor state that nothing can be determined from it without scientific testing or forensic evidence and that hasn't been undertaken at all."

So this is the failing of the modern media and entertainment industry. There is no super-attractive Temperance Brennan, who, with a glint in her startling eyes and a flick of her fantastic hair will suddenly find that a subtle change in the rings on the bone marrow in a chip on the girl's jaw means that at 9pm she was in a Croatian 7-11 the night before she went missing. This is science. When a body washes up after a week in the water, its not going to be much help. Its unfortunate, yes. But don't blame the coroner. Sue God for creating such damn inconvenient principles under which bodies decay in saline solutions filled with all sorts of bacteria who love the taste of human flesh. "Scientific Testing"? "Forensic Evidence"? get with the program people. There is no "cause of death" machine. And to start with calling it purely descriptive, then asserting it is a false statement because it doesn't tell you what you want, and then stating that all it tells you is exactly what they said it told you (which, presumably, makes it a true statement) is just bizarre.

It isn't this guys fault. he's obviously wrecked up. But it seems just a little bit of review-grubbing emotional chain-jerking to keep on labouring this point. Especially the last point about the judge taking a swim in the bay where she was found. how does that reflect anything about her case handling?

Hey media, grow some integrity. When Milton and mill signed off on an all access pass on your behalf, they did it in the name of a certain set of laudable ideals, not so you can go about being pants-on-heads idiots about what is a tragic situation that you are milking well past even your normally poor sense of decency.