Page 121 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

112 Per-Anders Forstorp

SECOND CONTEXT OF USE: “YOUR WORDS AGAINST
MINE” AS A STRATEGY OF PERSONAL DEFENSE

The second context for using the expression ―your words against mine‖ is
directly related to the public character of the legal sentence. As a direct
response to what she experiences as injustice, the woman in the fight at Crazy
Horse writes an open letter which is published in the debate column in Dagens
Nyheter, generally regarded as perhaps the most privileged media spot in print
media in Sweden, a spot to which not just anybody has access. In this letter
she recapitulates the events of the court proceedings and blends this with
retrospective fragments of her own political biography. The letter culminates
in a formal public resignation from her post as Chairman of SSU.
By using the expression ―your words against mine‖ (cf. below) in this
context, she is not reproducing her own stance in analogy with what motivated
the journalists in Excerpts 1-4. She is not in a position to maintain neutrality
vis-à-vis the legal process and she is not in the business or interest of declining
her own will vis-à-vis the court. By using this expression, she aims to
accomplish something entirely different than what has been done so far by the
journalists.

Excerpt 5

For me the court‘s decision did not prove that I said or did anything.
On the contrary, in a situation where words stand against words, the
court has chosen completely to buy the story by the doorkeeper and his
colleagues. It makes me miserable. It is unbelievably humiliating. (För
mig handlade inte domen om att det är bevisat att jag sagt eller gjort
något. Däremot har rätten i en situation där ord står mot ord valt att
fullständigt köpa vaktens och hans kollegors berättelse. Det känns
bedrövligt. Där ligger en sådan ofattbar förnedring.) [Dagens Nyheter,
December 16, 2006] (emphasis added).

In contrast to the journalists, she is in a position to make a verdict on the
decision made by the court. She is not constitutionally prohibited from
intervening in the evaluation of the decision, but she is in the business of
invalidating the interpretations on which the court‘s decisions were made. She
explicitly declares that the decision by the court was not a proof of what she
ever said or did – and doing precisely this is more or less what is expected of