CU PROFESSOR DEALING WITH U.S. TELEVISION TO SHOW DOCUMENTARY

By Kevin McCullen
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

The University of Colorado journalism professor who co-produced a documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case removed his name from the credits after a British TV station changed the title.

Michael Tracey said Thursday that he and co-producer David Mills were upset that Britain's Channel 4 changed their title from JonBenet's America to Who Killed JonBenet?

``It is not what the documentary is about,'' Tracey said. ``It's about the story of the Ramsey family and what they have been through. It is not a documentary that we set out to decide whether they are innocent or guilty.''

Tracey, 49, director of CU's Center for Mass Media Research, said that he is negotiating with an American television outlet to show a 75-minute version of the program. He would not disclose the name of the station.

The documentary criticizes the media's performance in covering the killing of the 6-year-old girl.

Tracey said he is considering a request from Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter, who is deciding whether to convene a grand jury in the case, to see unedited portions of the interviews with the Ramseys.

Tracey, who has been at CU 10 years, is a longtime observer of the media.

He has spent nearly 25 years researching television and the mass media, in Great Britain and at CU.

He once proposed teaching a course on soap operas in the journalism school to teach students about television's impact on popular culture.

Five years ago, he implored a conference to support public broadcasting in an attempt to ward off the ``perimeters of the wasteland that is American television.''

But he said nothing prepared him for the attention that has followed his production of the program about the Ramseys.

Tracey's involvement with the family began after he wrote an opinion page piece in the Boulder Daily Camera condemning the ``corruption of journalistic values'' for the ``voyeuristic, manipulative, trashy exploitative character of the coverage.''

A lawyer representing the Ramsey family called Tracey to ask him about his story. Several weeks later, he said, the attorney called back and said Patsy Ramsey would be willing to speak to one of his classes about media coverage of her daughter's murder.

Instead, Tracey called Mills, a producer and friend in London, and suggested they produce a documentary ``looking at the media's coverage of the Ramsey case to tell a story about the state of American journalism.''

``And you know, it's pretty trashed right now,'' Tracey said. ``It is not in a great state of health, frankly.''

The Ramseys were interviewed in February in Atlanta by two Newsweek reporters, although Tracey said he and Mills retained control of the filming.

July 10, 1998