Talk:Trial by media

Language of the last paragraph
The last paragraph (on the Indian case) uses language that is not quite neutral. While a source has been cited, I feel that this paragraph can be rephrased to be comply with NPOV. Also, the language can be edited to match that in the rest of the article. (It is quite jarring right now.) --Aveek 18:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

the famous dreyfus-affair should be mentioned also--Tresckow 21:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent cases
I think more recent cases like Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, and very recently the DSK and Casey Anthony cases can be added. There has certainly been a fair number of criticism leveled at the media about their coverage, for example here and here. Batjik Syutfu (talk) 02:03, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, the only evidence I've found of headlines using the phrase "Casey Anthony gets away with murder" all belong to blogs and opinion pieces. Hardly reputable. It reflects poorly on the rest of the page's information, which talks about more reliable media sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeteBayern (talk • contribs) 05:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The case file of Snr Sargeant Chris Hurley also reads with some bias, ignoring much of the inquest and information given at the time. User:PeteBayern (talk) 05:31, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Pete Bayern, this section of the article is biased and ignores the results of the 2010 coronial enquiry that Hurley punched Mulrunji in the face and that other police officers had shielded Hurley from blame. Is something really a trial by media if a later court finding is that they are at fault? Not a good example. The coverage surrounding Joanna Lees would be a better example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.111.67.204 (talk) 14:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a header for Myra Hindley and Maxine Carr, but no paragraph. This really needs to be fixed. Also, the paragraph about Clinton is far to conversational in style. Overall, after the dingo example, the list is pretty thin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.84.15.81 (talk) 02:28, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Merge proposal
User:Rupertslander proposed this article for merging with Court of public opinion back in June 2011, but didn't create an area for discussion, so I'm doing so. That proposed merge seems sensible to me: 'court of public opinion' and 'trial by media' refer to slightly different aspects of essentially the same phenomenon, and they could be covered in the same article. Robofish (talk) 16:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the merger. Trial by media is not the same as Court of public opinion, and both deserve their own pages. - Seanr451 (talk) 10:11, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Since public opinion is largely influence by the media, and legal trials occur in courts, these pages refer to the same thing. I agree with the merger. TYLER (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * No, the "court of public opinion" and "trial by media" are completely different concepts; public opinion is what the people, in general, think. Media opinion is what the MEDIA thinks. They can be directly opposite to one another, such as the current media/public divide on Barrack's presidency; the media still loves him, but the public is coming to loathe him. Superficially they DO seem related, and they can be at times (either the public is influencing the media or vise-versa), but they really are not the same thing. IF this proposal were to move forwards, it would have to be merged with several other nominally related concepts, the page itself then subdivided by concept, at which point someone would propose that page be split, leading us right back to square 1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.210.178.243 (talk • contribs) July 8, 2013‎


 * I agree with the submission that there is a subtle difference and multiple elements common a trial by media and the court of public opinion.


 * I think that this nuance is adequately significant to warrant the retention of both articles, therefore I oppose the proposed merger. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 18:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Famous words of Richard Nixon: "Try him in the press"
In his later years, [Nixon] started to drink a lot, probably to try and forget the things he had to do in his early years. ... As he had been doing on and off for days, he compared Ellsberg to Alger Hiss, the State Department official imprisoned for perjury after investigations driven by a young ... Try him in the press. Try him in the press. . . . leak it out. We want to destroy him in the press. Press. Is that clear?-- Richard Nixon, on Daniel Elsberg in the Nixon tapes, Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House - Page 338. '

The next day Nixon told Haldeman and Erlichmann, "We won the Hiss case in the press." --http://books.google.com/books?id=fHIGQTGemnAC&pg=PA162&dq=Nixon+Hiss+try+him+in+the+press&hl=en&sa=X&ei=621MUa_0Kazq0QG1kYGYDw&sqi=2&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Nixon%20Hiss%20try%20him%20in%20the%20press&f=false

Shouldn't these notorious statements appear somewhere in this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.11.200 (talk) 14:52, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Heated debate in the UK
I would question the unsourced statement "In the United Kingdom there is a heated debate between those who support a free press which is largely uncensored and those who place a higher priority on an individual's right to privacy and right to a fair trial.". I would say instead that in the UK there is a consensus that fair trial should have precedence, and I'm not aware of any "heated debate" on privacy either.Geebee2 (talk) 03:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)#

I removed the following text: "In the United Kingdom there is a heated debate between those who support a free press which is largely uncensored and those who place a higher priority on an individual's right to privacy and right to a fair trial." Geebee2 (talk) 11:03, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Chris Hurley
There is a wiki, Chris_Hurley_(police_officer) and the text for his case in this article seems disproportionate. I suggest entries be confined to one or two short paragraphs, giving the basic facts of each case, with little detail. This allows a reasonable overview of the whole subject. Geebee2 (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Table/grid to summarise features
I propose some kind of grid to show attributes for the various cases. Columns to include, for example, date of alleged crime, location, type of crime, type of defense (e.g. self-defense), sex of defendant, wealth of defendant, fame before/after, scope of and amount of media coverage, jury sequestration, time awaiting trial, # trial days, verdict, type and length of sentence, alleged motive. Perhaps two tables, one for men, one for woman, as there appear to be clear gender differences.Geebee2 (talk) 12:11, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Trim
I'm going to be bold and scrap the entire list of examples, for a couple of reasons. In sum, this is the kind of article that can do without recent cases, for reasons mentioned above--advocacy and slanted media coverage. It leaves us open to the kind of editing whereby a couple of newspaper articles and websites can be used to turn something into a "trial by media" and thereby cast doubt on the guilt or innocence of any suspect, violating WP:NPOV. Drmies (talk) 14:52, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Some of the examples don't have articles, which runs against well-accepted policy of listing articles/items/persons that have Wikipedia articles, especially in cases such as these, where there are serious BLP issues.
 * 2) In many cases, the sourcing is problematic.
 * 3) In general, just about every court case these days is so widely commented on by a media hungry for fodder to appease the masses--every more or less notable court case could conceivably be called "trial by media". By extension, this leaves every case open to a charge of advocacy, since media commenting on media coverage is by now a standard mode in certain kinds of journalism.
 * 4) UNDUE: the list of examples completely overwhelms the actual text of the article. There is no doubt in my mind that there ought to be plenty of academic articles and books to make a nicely fleshed-out article on the topic without having to resort to examples and media coverage which, by nature, is more ephemeral.
 * 5) The relatively small number of editors on this page, and the high incidence of SPAs, is indicative of a kind of advocacy which we should be very, very wary of. See the list of contributors:, for instance, never edited anything else, and is currently up at ANI for suspicion of advocacy editing Murder of Travis Alexander, a topic of direct relevance to this article--on which they have made 179 edits.


 * I agree entirely - a list of supposed 'trials by media' selected by contributors reeks of WP:OR and advocacy. If particular cases are discussed in detail as examples of 'trial by media' in academic sources, they may merit attention, but other 'examples' simply don't belong here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:10, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * You could restrict the list to cases that are complete finished. That would take care of the advocacy concern, wouldn't it? You say "There is no doubt in my mind that there ought to be plenty of academic articles and books to make a nicely fleshed-out article". Perhaps, but I haven't found any overall history. I think it's not too hard (over time) to build a fairly representative list, at least of cases that gained international recognition, that was my intention. The last 10 years would probably be over-represented, because it's easier to research, so that's a dilemma. I'm interested both in current cases and historic cases, I have added both. There are not THAT many really high profile trials, and if some are missing, is that a disaster?Geebee2 (talk) 16:41, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That advocacy concern is ongoing. It's still happening for OJ, for instance, and how long did it take for the court to rule that dingos indeed ate the baby? For the watchers, I dropped a half a dozen links to books that discuss the topic on Geebee's talk page. A Quest for Knowledge, your effort to broaden the scope of the article (which was heavily US-centric) is appreciated. Drmies (talk) 17:41, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 * For the dingos, 32 years, as the table I made indicated. As a suggestion, how about restoring just the tables, to address your "UNDUE" concern. A row in this table hardly constitutes "advocacy". The idea is to build the tables, and allow them to support/inform text in the article above. Is there a problem with that?Geebee2 (talk) 19:00, 8 June 2013 (UTC)