The Media Interview

I have to empathize a little with Mercades Nichols, the 17 year old Florida girl who is one of several defendants in the case of a videotaped beating that got major play on YouTube and the media in general. Nichols tried to get bail restrictions eased last week, in part to allow her to speak with the media about the case. Her request was denied.

It’s easy to say that Nichols and her companions made this whole travesty “public” by posting the video on YouTube, but it would be nice to think that all the experts, lawyers, and media people could approach things a little bit differently than immature 17 year olds. Not that there’s anything new about “trial by the court of public opinion” it’s just that the proliferation of new media outlets and social media is making those “trials” more public, more influential, and, often, more ghoulish.

You know things are bad, however, when it’s Nichols’s own lawyer who’s pushing for her ability to talk to the media:

…during Tuesday’s hearing, [James] Holz argued before the judge that Nichols should be allowed to speak for herself.

“Right now, the victim and other people are openly speaking to media whenever they want,” Holz said.

“The Sheriff’s Department weekly is on television speaking about this case. It just seems to me that everybody is speaking about the case - except the person alleged,” he said. He said Nichols wants her voice to be heard.

“She has basically been demonized within the media,” he said.

[From a Lakeland Ledger article]

Holz is worried, of course, that the media attention will make a fair trial difficult, and that’s one of the downsides of turning testimony into sound bites and opinions into testimony. But you’d think he’d be more worried about the damage Nichol could do to her own case by speaking out in the media. Lawyers are the ones who are supposed to make you whisper the answer in their ears before allowing you to respond to any question at all. I guess that 10 minutes on Larry King is more important now.

Instead of letting Nichols speak to the media, perhaps the public needs to stop watching the shows that sensationalize real cases. But apparently all the fictionalized sensationalism of crime books, shows, and movies isn’t enough to satisfy…