Have you been watching the trial of Oscar Pistorius? It sometimes feels difficult not to. Sky News run adverts trailing each new twist, turn and witness as though this were some soap opera denouement. It has become “appointment to view” television. An event for the cameras.
All of which is deeply and profoundly disturbing. Because a woman died. Because a man is fighting to be believed. Because watching a trial we all become, in a small way, the jury – and we have no right whatsoever to assume that role. “I mean, how can he not have noticed she wasn’t lying next to him?” I heard myself ask the other day, as though it were in some way any of my business. It isn’t.
Inevitably the Pistorius saga has reignited conversations about whether trials ought to be televised here in the UK, just as the OJ Simpson trial did back in the nineties. And those lobbying for such a change are probably pushing at an open door – we are already tip-toeing towards such a move and we do allow the broadcast of certain appeal cases. The motives for many arguing for cameras in court are charmingly transparent. Thanks to the ready-made drama of the Pistorius trial Sky News hasn’t had to make much running to fill the rolling, twenty four hour void that faces its producers every morning. Whenever the news fails to come to them they are able to switch to a live feed – and its audience can watch as a roll-call of witnesses play to the camera. No-one can judge Sky News, BBC News 24 and others for smacking their lips at the prospect of filling further hours with TV “justice”.
But, as ever, a case has to be made that isn’t built on pure self-interest. It would be vulgar to merely admit that it’s nice to have news assemble itself without any effort or input. And so the argument tends to rest on notions of “transparency”. “Justice should be open and accessible in a democracy” one advocate told me – as though there were a binary choice between putting trials on TV and Soviet-style secret courts. We live in a society where “transparency” is often deployed as some kind of universal good. The case for privacy is rarely heard. We all think we have a right to know and, more, a right to see – and we treat knowing and seeing as though they were somehow interchangeable. But there is a difference. Of course we should know that Oscar Pistorius is on trial for murder, but that is not the same as seeing, day-in-day-out, the act of his trial (and the reality of his torment) played out in front of us.
And, unfashionable as this may be, I believe there is a strong case for privacy in the court-room in order to retain the mystery and the awe of justice. There is a connection, here, to the argument about judges and barristers wearing their gowns and wigs as they do their work. On the one hand, like barring cameras, it seems anarchic and anachronistic. A throwback to a bygone age. But there is a use to the costumes, the special language, the separateness and isolation of the court – they combine to allow for an atmosphere of reverence. We shouldn’t be “familiar” with court. We should be cowed by an appearance in court, it should feel different and strange and slightly alien – justice is sacred and we must protect that.
When Nigel Evans appeared in court to defend himself against a slew of accusations – of which he is, we now know, innocent – he was pressed to reveal excruciating details of his private, sexual life. He told the Judge, at one moment of distress, that doing so was incredibly difficult for him, but it had to be done because it was only by exposing the deeply personal aspects of his life that the truth of what had happened could be found. Evans is a public figure; he is a man who trades, to some extent, on his stature and dignity and whose job depends on winning the support of other people. To broadcast his humiliation would have been to make a full return to his previous life that much harder. How does an innocent man (or woman) get back to normal when anyone can watch their lowest, most painful moment on YouTube at the click of a button? This too seems not to bother proponents too deeply. Perhaps because they, in tune with the society that we have become, don’t really understand or subscribe to either the presumption of innocence or the concept of privacy.
We should be wary of streaming the messy, emotional, tormenting and complicated reality of trials into our living rooms. We should preserve some mystique in our justice system. And we must consider, and be considerate of, the needs of witnesses and defendants who enter a court-room so that the truth may out, not so that we may all decide the truth on the basis of their relative skill as a performer. We must defend what is sacred, even if, in doing so, we create a bit more work for 24 hour news producers.
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