One of the things that continually irritates me is the fact that we do so many lynchings here in the United States -- i.e., where we crucify someone without a trial via prosecutors using the press as their hangmen. Wen Ho Lee, Richard Jewell, and Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill are three prominent examples of people who had their lives ruined via these sorts of lynchings.
But even more poisonous is when these lynchings are used against people who have current active criminal charges against them. The usual way it works is that the prosecution attempts to poison the jury pool by releasing prejudicial information to their cronies in the press that person XYZ did evil deed ABC. The person they're lynching never has the opportunity to respond in the press because of the needs of the upcoming criminal trial -- the defense needs to keep their defense strategy under close wraps so that they can spring surprises on the prosecution in the actual criminal trial, so the accused has to either try his case in the press and lose his case in court, or lose his case in the press and maybe -- but with reduced certainty -- win his case at court.
The inevitable result is that there is no fair trial. The jury pool has been poisoned by the prosecution's leaks to the press, no matter how much they insist they haven't been (all that jury questioning accomplishes here is to find out who's more convincing liars), and is predisposed to find the accused guilty unless proven innocent, making a mockery of the "innocent until proven guilty" notion. Even in the case where it appears there is no question of guilt, the notion that the accused can get a fair trial after his name has been drug through mud by the press is ridiculous. It's nothing but a show trial, Soviet-style, and a travesty of justice.
It doesn't have to be this way. In Canada, for example, their constitution guarantees a fair trial to all accused, thus prohibits the press from talking about cases that have not yet been tried in the courts. But then, Canada is a democracy and has a system of justice, rather than an oligarchy with a system of show trials to meet the pro-forma requirements of the Constitution. Here, the right of the oligarchs to lynch a man in the press overrides the right of the accused to a fair trial. And that's how we like it.
-- Badtux the Justice Penguin
In this country every is guilty until proven innocent, unless you have lots of money, then you are innocent no matter what.
ReplyDeleteGuilty until proven innocent in this county? I don't agree, money and lies buy a lot of guilty people freedom in this country. I've been in enough courtrooms to see that.
ReplyDeleteJust going to courts and watching people that you know are guilty is a very interesting education.
The system of law in this country is as screwed up as the system of politics.
This is one of the things that gets under my skin as well. I see this all of the time where the defendent is painted as being guily in the media before jury selection even begins.
ReplyDeleteIt is rare that the media ever shows the defendent's side of the story and the prosecutor's side always seems to be the truth regardless of the circumstances.
I've always attributed this to the fact that the media is forced to play nice with the prosecutor. If they don't play nice, the prosecutor can ensure that the competition gets the leads instead. Hence, the bias.
Still, I would like to see something to limit what they report but nooooo... that would infringe on the media's god given right to stick their nose where they think they should. The idea of responsible journalism has died in the age of sensationalism.
Down Hereunder, there's an odd (to me, at least) law that prevents TV stations from showing the faces of people who have been accused of crimes. There's lots of media interest in sensational crimes, especially when they involve stuff like famous football players getting drunk and joyriding with a motorcycle gang member doing a drive-by shooting on a rival bikie gang's HQ. But when the accused is perp-walked into court, TV stations can only film their backs until they're convicted, or they have to fuzz the screen over their faces. The peoples' names are still muddified, but I suppose people who don't know them will not be able to spit at them in the street.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be amazed at how much freedom the media have in the U.S. compared to how things work in the rest of the world. Despite some abuses like you mention, I still think that's the rest of the world's loss.
Yet the funny thing about the American press, Bukko, is that despite all this "freedom" they all seem to print pretty much the same thing. Maybe it's because all the major news outlets are owned by a small group of filthy rich oligarchs who have no truck with anything printed in their paper that does not comport with their ideology. It's like the old Soviet Union except with capitalist oligarchs rather than Communist apparatchniks as the controlling party.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Observant Penguin
You're right about the ownership thing, Tux. Not that it's much different here. Australian business conditions seem to favour duopolies. Big landmass, small population; the government doesn't want to have monopolies (like in the old socialist days) but there's not enough customer base to support three of most large enterprises.
ReplyDeleteSo we have Murdoch's rightist print media empire vs. the vaguely leftish Fairfax media in newspapers. There are three commercial TV networks, but one is pitifully weak. In telephony, there is Telstra, the remnant of the old government monopoly, vs. Optus, controlled by Singapore Telecom. In grocery stores, there is Cole's vs. Woolworth's. The two grocery chains also own the dominant semi-competing chains of petrol stations. In airlines, it's Qantas vs. Virgin, with both having "discount" airlines that they control, which gives the illusion of competition.
It's fascinating to see in depth how other countries operate. Like being a business anthropologist.