Page 117 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

108 Per-Anders Forstorp

which is also a way of reproducing law as the legitimate arena for solving
legal conflicts and of refraining the media from doing so [Thompson].
Later, in connection with the trial at district court (as shown in Excerpts 2
and 3), the media once again used this expression which described a legal and
communicative standstill – a communicative state of exception - between the
opponents. Declaring a situation ―your words against mine‖ is the same as
saying that what we have here is a matter of conflicting accounts. Until a
legitimate legal verdict is reached, no one reporting on the case can nor should
say which version of the accounts was most truthful. The media use the
expression ―your words against mine‖ more than half a year after the event at
Crazy Horse because they are still extremely cautious not to let any premature
evaluation of the event slip into their reports.
The media declared the conflict a communicative state of exception (cf.
below) because they strive to conform to the general expectation of the media
according to the principle of non-intervention with the legal processes. By
using the expression ―your words against mine‖, they are able to emphasize an
epistemological position that aims at balancing the contested accounts. It is an
implication of a principle of neutrality. It is not only a formula handy for the
difficulty of coping with contested accounts; it is also a declaration of a
position of neutrality congruent with the expected behavior of the media
[Clayman] [Greatbatch] [Clayman & Heritage]. The case in question can be
regarded as an opportunity to reproduce this stance of neutrality. The question
is rather: why is this or similar expressions not used far more often considering
that, in principle, the media always would need to reproduce a stance of
neutrality [Schudson]? An explanation that I have tried here is that this is so
because this case involves a public person, towards whom more concern is
shown.
Constitutionally the media is not regarded as a legitimate legal institution
and serious effort on behalf of various stakeholders is put into securing that
this remains so. Still, it is well known and generally acknowledged that the
media plays an important role in affecting the opinions and feelings of the
public [Schudson]. No report in any media or in any modality - perhaps with
the exception of sophisticated biometric technologies such as DNA-analysis
and face recognition such as a photograph, a documentary film or a tape
recording -- is an innocent mirror of reality. The media and, in particular, the
self-acclaimed ―serious media‖ such as those quoted above, want to assume a
stance of neutrality, partly in order to qualitatively distinguish themselves
from their tabloid colleagues with their less recognized reputation for veracity.
In media studies it is repeatedly shown that reporting on almost anything, also