Trial by Media

Helen’s comment on my last post about Barry Hall posed some very interesting questions, which are more than worthy of a post in and of themselves. It has taken me several days of pondering to venture a response.

Helen wrote

"How do you think trial-by-media relates to sport, given sport's symbiotic and mutually dependent relationship with media? Would suppression of media reports verge on censorship? Is the media capable of controlling itself and resisting reporting on such events? Or is sport outside the realm of natural justice, given it writes and adheres to its own set of laws?"

I suspect I am likely to tie myself in knots of contradiction on this topic, but here goes…

I think trial-by-media is absolutely an important issue in sport, and has been for as long as someone pointed a camera at a game. I will focus my attention on its role in football, but pretty much everything to be said can be applied to all sport.

Football and media have a mutually dependent relationship that has grown more important, and more dangerous with every passing year and every passing dollar. Just ask the staff of the Age who argue the independence of their journalism is a threatened by The Age’s cosy relationship with Melbourne Victory. Journalistic integrity in football reporting at the Herald Sun has long gone out the window, though I hazard to guess few of its readers noticed.

Is the media capable of controlling itself and resisting reporting on such events? Sadly the answer is no. A few years ago now, newspapers and nightly news programs noticed that articles about sport sell. And big. So sport sections, grew and grew to the point where now, the weekend papers (and Monday, and Friday) are all about the sport. Not that I’m complaining, its all I ever read. Oh no, wait, I am complaining. I complain almost every weekend as I open the paper and read another bullshit article cobbled together to fill column inches around some really good photography.

Actions on the field are now replayed ad nauseum (literally in the case of Nathan Brown’s broken leg) until any infringing player cannot possible get a fair hearing at the tribunal, nor at the local bar or around kitchen table one imagines. This is made easier and more impressive thanks to the instant replay and the numbers of cameras now around the group. But it is the product of the need to fill air time and column inches. We hear everyone’s opinion, get every angle, discuss every scenario before it reaches a tribunal and while our nation’s courts may still have the capacity for impartiality, the football tribunal certainly doesn’t (and I don’t suspect it ever really did). Pressure from public opinion, and indeed from an AFL more interested in protecting its brand that anything else cannot help but influence the tribunal.

Having said all of that, in the case of Barry Hall I think the tribunal did well to hold firm to its decision of 7 weeks, rather than 9 because of Hall’s guilty plea. It was correct within the laws of the game, and showed they were able to resist the pressure of the media, and various members of the Staker family. So maybe I’m wrong.

I don’t agree with suppression, but I suspect that even if the AFL could suppress media reports about an incident, it would be less than effective. There is more gossip, and more loose lips in football than anywhere else I have come across, and as people like Bomber Thompson can probably testify, the truth is never as dangerous or damaging as the rumors that will abound in an information vacuum. I would rather see a glut of uninformed commentary on actual events/facts that a handful of articles made up of innuendo laden speculation. In conclusion, Suppression just wont work – how many episodes of Underbelly have you seen?

So well, what’s the answer? I’m not really sure. I don’t think newspapers and nightly news programs are going to give up the cash-cow that is football lightly and tribunals will always face outside pressure when making decisions. I just hope that editors have enough freedom, ability and integrity to make a reasoned judgment about each story they run, and whether it contributes anything further to a discussion.