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Abrams on media and presuming innocence

By Mark Obbie

NBC News legal analyst Dan Abrams has a wonderfully provocative op-ed in the Journal today about the role of journalists and commentators covering criminal prosecutions. His thesis goes like this: Stop demanding that the news media presume defendants' or suspects' innocence. That's not our job, and it's absurd in cases where the facts clearly point to guilt. The purpose of the presumption, Abrams explains clearly, is to place the burden where it belongs -- on the government -- to ensure a fair trial by an impartial jury. But that outcome doesn't depend on pretrial news coverage that suspends disbelief, he argues. "Demanding that all of us presume every defendant innocent outside of a courtroom," Abrams concludes, "is to demand that we stop evaluating facts, thereby suffocating independent thought and opinion."Abrams makes some valid points and brings refreshing candor to a discussion often cloaked in sanctimony. And he does so from a position of strength, as one of the smarter, more experienced, and responsible TV legal analysts. But what he really seems to be attacking is the shorthand that lawyers and others use to critique the media. When they demand fealty to the presumption-of-innocence principle, aren't they really asking us to do what Abrams also wants -- that is, to examine the facts critically and skeptically? If you simply change their slogan from "the media should presume defendants' innocence" to "the media should not assume guilt before all the relevant facts are in," you end up at the same place. So Abrams is making a lot of noise about something that really boils down to semantics. But it's a fun read, and no doubt will cause a lot of harrumphing from the legal establishment.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on February 27, 2009 (boomark / email).