Media Coverage of Trials
Providing in-depth coverage of trials, including pretrial hearings and all events related to a case has become a prime topic for the television media. In the last five years, the television channel "Court TV" has acquired over twenty million viewers (Lassiter, 1996). In addition, a body of research exists demonstrating that pretrial media coverage affects the outcomes of some trials (Bruschke & Loges, 1999). A variety of experts including lawyers, psychologists, and communication experts have all suggested that pretrial publicity, when negative, may influence juries negatively against defendants (Dixon & Linz, 2002) in spite of the fact that under our legal system, a person is considered innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
But at the same time, one of the most cherish rights given to us in the Constitution is freedom of the press -- the right of the media to communicate to the public freely and without censorship regarding what we should and should not hear.
The American Bar Association put forth "Model Rules" in 1983) regarding what information might be so prejudicial to a defendant that it should not be made public including any prior record of the defendant, the defendant's general reputation, information regarding any type of confession, results of any tests (or refusal to take such tests), information regarding plea bargains, and opinions about the guilt or innocence, or merits of the prosecution's case (Dixon & Linz, 2002). In spite of these rules, we have seen media frenzies over such cases as O.J. Simpson and currently, Scott Peterson, on trial for the murder of his wife and unborn son.
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