ABSTRACT
The free press/fair trial subject invites a consideration of notorious case histories that capture the Zeitgeist of mass media interest and, when they are accompanied by a perception of hysteria and viral reverberation of prejudice against a defendant or defendant(s), may result in miscarriages of justice. Media studies theorists like to engage the phenomenon of the moral panic as a relevant concept, which was discoursed by Stanley Cohen in his seminal 1973 text Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. The idea was developed by Stuart Hall in Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (1978), given extended analysis by Critcher in Moral Panics and the Media (2003) and some original philosophical evaluation by Zylinska in her chapter ‘Ethics and Moral Panics’ in The Ethics of Cultural Studies (2005). In the American context, Jon Bruschke and William E. Loges have bridged criminology with media studies in Free Press vs. Fair Trials: Examining Publicity’s Role in Trial Outcomes (2004).
