Page 48 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

The Man in the Gallery with the Writing on His Face 39

MEDIA COVERAGE

The presence of this community was also quickly noticed by journalists
and commentators and, as the much anticipated Inquest began to drag on with
relatively little sensation and increasingly strained efforts to pursue conspiracy
theories by some of the legal representatives, a significant degree of attention
started to be paid to the social environment of the court. Repeatedly,
commentary picked up on the architecture of the site, on the layout of the
courtroom and its meanings, on the demeanour of witnesses, of family and
friends, of jury and press and, frequently, of the public who attended. Writing
in the Daily Mail, Jane Fryer gave a detailed account of the space and the
participants, including an atmospheric description of the ―slightly musty smell
of too many people cooped up in one room for too long‖ [Fryer], and made a
series of comments on the ―small band of Diana devotees‖ and their actions in
the Courtroom. For Stephen Bates, writing in The Guardian, the demeanour of
those in court was read as a significant index of attitudes to the Inquest; ―The
legal teams have been beadily watched most days from a few feet away by
Fayed himself, surrounded by his smirking phalanx of acolytes and
employees‖ [Bates]. In The Spectator, Martin Gregory‘s account of being
called a ―bastard‖ and flicked a V-sign outside the courtroom by Al-Fayed was
followed by a further description of witness interaction which drew attention
to the behaviours around the court (as did sections of his Sky News
documentary which followed the conclusion of the Inquest). Commenting on
evidence given by a witness who had made accusations concerning another,
Gregory wrote; ―On oath, MacNamara withdrew his claim, but claimed that he
had not been able to apologise to Rees-Jones, as he had not seen him since he
made it. I was surprised by this, as I had witnessed the two men acknowledge
th
each other in the High Court on 29 January, while Rees-Jones prepared to
give his evidence‖ [Martyn].
As the Inquest proceeded, reportage increasingly began to focus on the
significance of the empty 150 seats of the courtroom Annexe, reading them as
a signifier of the failings of the hearings as an exercise in public openness
[Verkiak]. Such reports poured scorn on the proceedings and their cost, or on
the suggestibility of authorities prepared to bow to the Al-Fayed camp‘s legal
team‘s persistence. Some articles interviewed those present in the annexe,
ranging across the attendants who stood desultory guard, the students, day-
trippers and legally interested parties who dropped in, and seeking comments
on public apathy [Winterman]. Others, throughout the Inquest, fixed on those
particular individuals – the nine or so ―dishevelled‖ [Bates, 2008i] people who