Amanda Knox has accused the media of depicting her as guilty over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher despite her proven innocence.

The American former exchange student has returned to Italy for the first time since an appeals court acquitted her in 2011 over the killing of her British roommate in Perugia in 2007.

Speaking in Italian at a panel discussion in Modena entitled titled Trial By Media, Ms Knox said she was portrayed “on the global scene as cunning, psychopath, drugged, whore, guilty”.

She broke down as she said the media had invented a “false and baseless story, which fuelled people’s fantasies”.

Ms Knox’s 2011 acquittal was part of a long legal process before she was definitively cleared of killing Ms Kercher in 2015 by Italy’s highest court.