Numerous newspaper organisations and even a television channel managed to misunderstand the Amanda Knox verdict and reported her appeal had failed.
“Breaking News: Amanda Knox loses appeal,” screamed the Sky News ticker as the verdict was read out on Monday night.
But they were not alone as The Mail Online and The Sun Online also managed to condemn Miss Knox to further incarceration.
“Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected,” reported the Daily Mail’s website with a picture of Knox looking, plain faced, at her lawyers.
The Sun said: “Amanda Knox is guilty of killing Meredith Kercher” while the Guardian’s live blog also fell in to the same trap before quickly correcting its error.
So what went wrong? According to the Daily Mail, which dedicated an entire box on page five of Tuesday’s paper to explain, it was all lost in translation.
“Using the word ‘guilty’ , the judge first upheld her conviction for slander – for falsely accusing bar owner Patrick Lumumba of carrying out the killing.”
The Daily Mail explained that the “guilty” word “caused some to initially think that her conviction for Meredith Kercher’s murder had been unheld.”
But what is more confusing is how an entire paragraph of quotes backing the “guilty” verdict managed to appear.
AFP’s Alex Ogle tweeted how the website had written: “Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice had been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail".