Page 28 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

―Mediated Forensics: From Classroom to Courtroom‖ 19

by legal professionals were tolerated less than more graphic images made by
television producers on the same subject matter in a fictional context.
There is an obvious jurisdictional issue – that the French inquisitorial
system does not have a specialised coroner‘s court, whereas the common law
British and American legal systems make an exception to its adversarial
system with a separate coronial, investigative court. The students may also be
reacting to the novelty of separate fulltime courts dealing with coronial
matters, while in France, these tasks are shared as one of many functions
within investigating courts processes.
The problem with this explanation is clear. The students were
simultaneously exposed to representations of the British and American
coroners‘ courts in television shows, both reality and fictional in genre, with
no adverse reactions. The cross media presentation problematises any
suspicion that it was the students‘ age or lack of experience that caused their
response. Once again, young law students, apparently like many of their peer
group, are being part of mass audiences for television shows that specialise in
graphic depictions of bodily dissection, mutilation and injury. One has only to
consider the number and recent success of programs such as CSI – ―the most
viewed television series in the world today‖ – to confirm that what needs to be
explained is their popularity, not, on the contrary, the aversion of their
audiences.
It may well be that the French students, like audiences generally, are
fascinated with the unknown inner workings of a system like the coroner‘s
court. What is distant in a jurisdictional, geographic and cultural sense from
French students is also closed for British audiences and, albeit to a somewhat
lesser extent thanks to wider media accessibility to courts, for American ones,
as well. So the phenomenon we study is probably not culturally specific, nor
specifically French. Detection stories and television shows seem to have
burgeoned in part as a response to the necessarily closed and private nature of
police investigation, and the banning of cameras from court proceedings. The
hermetic nature of a professional context such as this brings out an aesthetic
instinct for voyeurism and curiosity [Newtown, 105]. In the case of the
coroner‘s court, an innate interest of audiences in medical and criminal
procedures that comprise the inner workings of these secluded courts can help
explain the growth of fictional representations of the same jurisdictions.
There has been a longstanding mix of reasons, some essential, others
discretionary, for barring access of mass media to crucial areas of police and
legal investigation and decision-making. [Cohn, Dow] [Golfard]. In the matter
of media access to courts, clear differences exist between national systems.