This is CNN's lead article tonight -- concerning the potential link between Craigslist and the murder of Julissa Brisman of Boston. Brisman met her clients as a massage therapist on the popular website. Of course this is a tragic incident, but I want to point out the ways in which the media spins a certain fear and panic into our hearts by attempting to link the murder to Craigslist. After all, this isn't the lead article on CNN for any old reason -- it's the lead article because it successfully links a popular sense of moral decay vis-a-vis the Internet to a brutal murder.

It would be hard to imagine this story gaining similar ground, say, if the victim met her attacker via a newspaper ad for massage services. Or at a bar. Or anywhere where there isn't the same fodder for moral panic. But she met him online, and that proves to work especially well in tandem with a moral panic about the Internet's power to bring society to new levels of depravity. The murder's lurid details (she's a "massage therapist", after all) just add to the story's message of moral decay, depravity, and social demise. It's a tragic murder -- and my heart goes out to Brisman and her family and friends -- but we need to be critical on how stories like this get used to posture a social message in the media that ultimately buttress a conservative anti-sex, anti-technology panic.