"TRIAL BY MEDIA": IS IT FAIR OR UNFAIR?- (Blog)


            The Social Media is a powerful tool for social engineering.  It draws its power from Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

What is fair and what is unfair are not absolute and static ideas. They may change according to the time, place and perspective of one person over other.  What may seem fair to one person over the event may seem unfair to other person over the same.  The "trial by media" is one such notion.  This phrase "trial by media" basically means the impact that the media has on trial proceedings.

IS IT FAIR OR UNFAIR?

For instance, an Accused is declared guilty by the media at the time of the arrest, blatantly ignoring the doctrine of presumption of innocence of the accused until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.  Likewise, our current society has largely addicted to social media. We can see a clear impact that people mind presume someone to be guilty of an offence without even knowing the basic fact of the events happened. So, the person who is considered to be guilty may be innocent in real but the portrayal of social media may make him grieve for the rest of his life.  Some cases of media trial can be the Nitish Kataramurder case, Priyadarshini Matoo murder case, and the Jessica Lal murder case.

Here, the Trial by media is not legal in any way.  However, in recent situations across the world the social media has made the guilty person to pay for their wrongdoings. One such example is the murder of the George Floyd by the police officer in USA lead to the massive protest against the racism across the globe.  And also, with the voice raised by the people on social media lead to the CBI investigation in the Sathankulam double murder case.

Whether the Media trial is Fair or Unfair? Is still being a question of everyone? It is considered to be fair when the offender gets punished and considered to be unfair when the innocent is presumed to be guilty and punished.  So, the larger population across the globe believes that whatever is shown on the media is to be true. So, the people and the authorities have to cross-check everything shown on the media and decide whether the person can be proven guilty or not.


-S. Mugesh

School of Excellence in Law.

Comments

  1. Unknown6 August 2020 at 22:27

    Media needs to act as a watchdog and show the society whatever is happening around and also needs to act as the platform for the voice of the society. But now a day's even media has been doing things for their salaries and TRP's.

    ReplyDelete

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