Can trials be unbiased with media saturation?

By Ali G.

With the amount of media coverage and the depths to which reporters today can delve into legal matters, how can any trial be left open and unbiased, especially in the cases which deal with foreign powers? Is there really such a thing as innocent until proven guilty?

Throughout the duration of my two days in Boston Massachusetts, my JUA group visited two law firms and watched two different trials. And throughout the whole experience I asked questions which I hoped would lead to the answer of my essential question. Question after question, all were answered and yet none of which even remotely answered my essential question. After the second interview I discovered something quite problematic; the law firms we went to, and presumably all law firms, do not deal with international laws.

I found out many things about Boston City Hall’s London office, but none of this was relevant to the theme of “Global Problems, Local Solutions”, none of it was relevant to my question. While at Boston City Hall I met a woman named Marybeth Long, who works in the Media Law department, she answered my questions on media allowances and what defines them.
Public Records Laws are very broad and open ended. They determine what is open to the public (Every document, paper, record, map, photograph, etc., as defined by law, that is made or received by a government entity or employee is presumed to be a public record (www.sec.state.ma). Those documents which are clearly defined by the laws can be disputed by lawyers and their clients. However, documents which are being processed or used in government affairs are under no means open to the public.

Over the course of our time spent in Boston we conducted several “person on the street” interviews. The opinions of these people were far more direct than those of the lawyers. I asked three general questions to several different individuals and parties, generally people believed the same thing; the media has access to far too much information in high profile cases, which is systematically polluting the jury pool and biasing cases. Several people brought the War on Iraq to my attention when I inquired about how they thought the media affected people’s opinions on high profile cases. I had the privilege to discuss this with two officers, one of whom happened to be going to school to become a lawyer, they believed that there was no privacy overseas for those involved in the war, and that the media is “trying the case before it goes to court…[the media] prejudices the case”.

The opinions of these people together with the hard facts about public record laws lead me to draw the conclusion that the media is, in fact, biasing trials. This is of course true for both those here at home and those abroad. Until the media is reigned in, without oppressing freedom of speech, this problem will continue and there will be no such thing as a fair and unbiased jury. However, having only based this upon rough facts and the opinions of a diverse group of people, my answer has not been based on too much of anything.