On Trial By Media

With the Philosophy of the rules of law deeply rooted in the people's heart, justice has become a gradual focus in the society. The effect brought by media justice of judicial cases is also two-sided: one the one hand, reports of judicial cases by media serve to satifisfy the audience's right to know; on the other hand, because of the offside function of trial by media, its negative effects has become more and more salient. In reality, the trial by media is realized in its reports based on one-sided, exagerated and even non-factual cases in order to induce the public's emotions like love and hate. Trial by media aims to make predictive qualitative conviction of the suspects'criminal facts beyond the normal proceedings in law, which brings about great pressure on the judiciary. Therefore, the judiciary is not able to perform their right to make just, fair and independent judgement; thus, trial by media produces a range of negative effects on the promotion of legal system, the spread of the spirit of the rules of law and the establishment of the judiciary authority. Deng thorn official case" was in fact an ordinary criminal case, but it was typical of its sensational stimulation. Therefore, around such a case, the present study aims to answer the following questions:(1)How did media behavior lead to "trial by media" phenomenon?(2)What are "trial by media" phenomenon causes?(3)How to prevent "trial by media" phenomenon?The present study is divided into five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction of the thesis. Here the origins of the phenomena of trial by media, its current researches ,approaches and significances are introduced. Chapter Two is the literature reivew of previous studies on trial by media. In this chapter, the thesis focuses on the concept of trial by media and the previous studied conducted on it. In essence, trial by media is the offsid function of the media, whose original duty is to supervise the public opinon to speak, to supervise and to know. In addition, the differences between trial by media and the right to supervise the public opinion are distinguished at last.The major part of the present study is put in Chapter Three, in which the respective roles played by traditional media and online media in trial by media are analyzed in details based on the Porter Schema theory and the theory of spiral silence effect. In the end, the negative effects brought by trial by media are further testified and trial by media in China is also described. Last but not least, the reasons of the ocurrence of trial by media get explored and specific suggestions are listed at last.