Page 34 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

―Mediated Forensics: From Classroom to Courtroom‖ 25

Reality television blurs the line of fiction and reality, and begins to depict legal
and court processes, from police investigation, to prosecution, to trial and
judgment, in a fully televised format.
It is thus possible that the students‘ reaction to the material was to a sense
of it being out of its context of the full judicial process. As law students, they
would respond more intelligibly if the full context of processes surrounding
this evidence were present or observed. The issues of media and legal literacy
thus interweave, in the immediate context of the screening of video as
classroom material. The issue is not merely a matter of interpretation of the
message in its own forms or genres, but of dynamic translation and discursive
reconstruction of messages into social and professional contexts. Interpretation
involves identification and recognition and some of these socialised and
professional links could be unknown or absent in student reception of the
particular sequence.
Their response to selective use of video evidence also points to the wider
and unfulfilled potential for the use of video and television in court
environments. The American shows in fact might satisfy these needs in young
undergraduate viewers because they realize a potential and informative content
about mediated court proceedings that would put court domains on equal
footing with other parts of society that are accessible and represented on video
media. That is, television can help legitimate social reality and set a
presentational framework for an assessment of truth.
The wider issue of cameras and courts is a large issue that can only begin
to be addressed in this paper [Pearson] [Howard]. For instance, it is becoming
an emerging issue in France, a country which is otherwise very restricted in
media access to courts, with the proposed introduction of video-conference
testimony in the case of trials involving witnesses from overseas territories
(Guyanna, Polynesia, La Réunion, St Pierre & Miquelon, etc.). There are of
course philosophical and other theoretical issues at stake in any idea of the
―televised‖ or ―televisual‖ court. Can the subtlety of legal argument, in written
form, be represented in a video environment? Will the witness testify in front
of the camera as he would in a real courtroom? Wouldn‘t the camera‘s focus
on the witness‘s face be too narrow to allow for perception of other
participants? In view of such reservations, the initial reaction of many French
judges to the prospect of videoconference trials is a decided ‗No‘.
Can multi media supplement visual presentation with logical and written
aids? Television has always specialised in caption and on screen text. It would
be a sensible progression to envisage court media continuing the multi-media
presentation of varieties of content and image. Recourse to philosophers such