Trial by Media

This agenda-setting book argues that Trial by Media is redefining the meaning and nature of justice in a multi-media world. Through a multi-disciplinary analysis of the anatomy, production, consumption, impact, and normative and legal boundaries of this new form of media justice, Trial by Media develops an original framework for examining the moral politics of crime, control and criminal justice in the post-trust society.

Trial by Media is a form of interactive, mediatised justice in which individuals and institutions are accused, tried, judged and sentenced in the ‘court of public opinion’. This agenda-setting book argues that Trial by Media is redefining the meaning and nature of justice in a multi-media world. First, the authors map the neoliberal transformations and cultural dynamics that have given rise to this new form of media justice. Then, systematically analysing the anatomy, production, consumption, impact, and normative and legal boundaries of trial by media, they examine the proliferation of high-profile celebrity trials, press campaigns in the name of crime victims, the exposure of transgression, scandal and cover-up by powerful individuals and institutions, and the growing influence of media justice on criminal justice policy and practice. Drawing from a diversity of multi-disciplinary resources, Trial by Media looks beyond mainstream understandings of crime and media to develop an original framework for examining the moral politics of crime, control and criminal justice in the post-trust society.