Serial Podcast: A Case Study

On October 3, 2014, a podcast by the name of Serial was released. The story of this podcast followed one woman’s journey to solve the murder of Hae Min Lee, a high school girl who was murdered in 1999. This woman’s name is Sarah Koenig. In the beginning, Sarah Koenig got a call from a woman named Rabia, whose brother was a good friend of Adnan's. She claimed that he was innocent. This sparked an investigation that would bring to light many different aspects of the case that hadn’t been properly explored. Throughout the case, Sarah explored all of the evidence that had been given at the court, and, some that hadn’t. This podcast brought to light many important facts that would lead to further trials of Adnan Syed, the man who was accused of her murder. However, this podcast was flawed. Serial, while it was a good attempt to prove the accused’s innocence, had a rather big moral issue, a biased opinion that threw some of the important facts out of proportion

Another important element of the podcast was the fact that Sarah had a bias towards the innocence of Adnan Syed, although, it wasn’t too obvious. When the court first looked at the case, much of their evidence revolved around one person's story. This person is known as Jay. His testimony is one the biggest, and one of the only, pieces of evidence used by the police against Adnan. In the podcast, Sarah is attempting to get away from this and provide evidence to support his innocence. However, throughout the podcast, it becomes clear that she believes he is innocent. Now, I’m not saying whether I think he is innocent or guilty, or whether Jay’s account was accurate or inaccurate or that any of the information that she got while she was doing this was true or not. However, I believe that due to her belief that Adnan is innocent, she may have left out things that could have swayed the audience in either