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Headlines declare guilt before juries do
THE NEWS MEDIA ARE THE JUDGES OF THE American criminal justice system. They are the kings and queens of the court of public opinion, sitting at their terminals composing 96-point he-did it, she did-it headlines.
The editors regularly send out a fleet of street sweepers
to collect scraps of misinformation - rushing from one press conference to another, quoting people who hope to have roles in a soon-to-be-released reality series.
These arbiters of right and wrong don't need any evidence, because they are always almost right. They have all the tweets they will need to publish or broadcast their stories. Who needs a trial? That's for law school moot courts.
This is the real world: the world of media. Where opinions trump facts; where men and women can spot the truth tellers and the liars in a media minute. They don't have to worry about appeals, just the next news cycle.
News organizations rarely ever say they're sorry. When they're sued for libel, they blame the people they quoted. The media landscape is littered with broken reputations, but there is no time to repair them. There are too many deadlines to meet.
Newsrooms are getting smaller and smaller, so reporters are relying more and more on handouts in criminal cases from prosecutors and lawyers. Sometimes they destroy their own reputations in the process.
The best example of how wrong the media can be is a case in which Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the 62year-old former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was accused of sexually assaulting Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old maid, in his suite at the Sofitel Hotel in New York.
Diallo gave the grand jury a compelling account of how Strauss-Kahn allegedly abused her sexually when she went to clean his room. He was indicted on seven separate counts of sexual and criminal misconduct.
As far as the news media were concerned, that indictment was as good as a conviction. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, has been nicknamed by that country's media as "The Hot Rabbit" in recognition of his worldwide womanizing. He was guilty as headlined.
DNA tests confirmed they had sexual contact. Diallo said Strauss-Kahn forced her to have oral sex. To the media, his not guilty...