Page 10 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

In: Courting the Media: Contemporary … ISBN: 978-1-61668-784-7
Editors: Geoffrey Sykes © 2010 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION – “MEDIATING
MEDIATION”

The theme of this anthology could broadly be tagged or summarised by
two terms: media and law. However speculative it might seem to combine two
terms, each of which is already conceptually broad, even vague in its own
right, for the past decades there has been a general understanding about
particular issues that are relevant to any relationship of law and media. Two
main perspectives initially spring to mind: the access of mass media, in
particular television, to court and legal processes, and the representation and
depiction of court and legal processes by the mass media, in particular
television. The relationship between the two terms can be seen quickly as
reflecting a public relationship between two powerful and significant
institutions in the public sphere – that of broadcast television, and legal
practice.
These two sectors can be regarded as fundamentally distinct yet also inter-
related. The problematic issue of allowing television cameras and journalists
direct access to court proceedings, for example, remains largely unresolved in
many jurisdictions, yet longstanding restrictions or outright prohibition by
news or current affairs programs has not stopped a plethora of court, detection,
current affairs, forensic and drama programs from capitalising on public
interest in the same subject matter that is not available in real time broadcasts.
It is possible to argue that issues of confidentiality, probity and regulation of
crime and legal processes (the media term is gate-keeping or exclusion of
subjects from media attention) has in part motivated the fictional depictions of
the same processes. Such negative motivation – to depict indirectly what
cannot be positively permitted or seen - of course only in part explains the