Episode 11: Remaining Impartial

I know that throughout the past few weeks of our class listening to "Serial" together, we have criticized Koenig for a lot of the choices she has made in her podcast. A common thread that has been brought up is how ethical or unethical Koenig is in terms of the way that she presents the content in her podcast, mostly because it is packaged as an entertainment piece. However, I think she did a fairly good job of remaining neutral in this week’s episode and sticking to her job of being an impartial journalist. As she sifted through interviews with members of Adnan’s community at the mosque, there seemed to be just as many negative reflections on Adnan’s character as there were positive ones. Even some of the people who had good things to say about Adnan also pointed towards details of his duplicitous past that seemed to indicate his ability to murder Hae Min Lee.

Koenig herself seemed to be unsure of what to make of all these conflicting opinions about Adnan’s character. So she brought in an expert witness, a forensic psychology and lawyer who provided some relevant insight into Adnan’s case. But at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling like he makes even less of a contribution to our understanding of Adnan, because he basically says that Adnan could either be innocent or just really good at covering up the truth.

This episode seemed to swing back and forth between providing proof of Adnan’s innocence as well as undermining his good guy ‘act’ and I couldn’t help but feel very confused at its conclusion. However, I would like to commend Koenig for presenting both sides of this case fairly equally in this episode. I stumbled upon this interesting article that serves as a kind of response to the backlash Koenig herself has received since creating the podcast. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/unpacking-the-social-justice-critique-of-serial/383071/

Basically, the writer defends Koenig’s role as an investigative journalist, and forgives her for missing minor details about other cultures and leaving out details about the race of the central characters in the podcast. I think it was a nice perspective to see someone defending Koenig for once, since I think our class has been criticizing her work more than we have been complimenting her.

The only thing that I feel like gave away Koenig’s bias in this episode was when she introduced the 8-page letter from Adnan at the end. I think her intention was to show the audience of listeners his truly remorseful side and sway us towards Adnan’s side one last time before the final episode. I can’t say that it worked on me, but I thought it was an interesting tactic. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this podcast will actually end after the confusion that this week’s episode left me in.