A COUPLE of jurors have been in the news recently, one for speaking his mind in court, one for speaking his mind on Facebook. One is now facing a contempt charge after he allegedly committed his thoughts on being chosen to try a man charged with sexual offences against a child to his Facebook page. He may be regretting being quite so frank in allegedly saying he “wanted to fuck up a paedophile.”
The other was a juror on a sexual offence trial in Tyneside, but his problem was not the nature of the offence, it was the origins of the offender – a Mackem (native of Sunderland) whose home team had just given the Geordie juror’s team, Newcastle United a 3-0 drubbing in the local derby. The juror was, he confessed, incapable of trying the man fairly and was discharged.
Cue outrage on Twitter at his confession, especially as the delay to the trial meant the victim had to go through evidence again.
Would we rather both had remained silent? Of course it would be preferable that all jurors arrived at trial capable of setting aside prejudice and trying the case solely on the evidence.
But if they are not capable of doing so, isn’t it better to know that?
The Toon fan made his feelings known in court, so avoided anything more than the disapproval of the court, and a vocal few on Twitter and elsewhere. The Facebooking juror is facing somewhat more serious consequences.
This raises a wider point about the way in which offensive behaviour on social media is being policed and reported by the media and it follows on from the post I wrote below, about Paris Brown.
At the moment publication on social media is being treated by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts as just that, a form of publication, which it undoubtedly is. I would argue that it is more than that, it is fundamentally different to that.
Publication has for centuries now, involved many tiers of eyes examining an article, book or broadcast before it reached the general public. The exception being, perhaps, live TV, but even there a time delay and a watchful eye meant the public were usually spared anything too offensive.
In my own experience, any piece of writing I perpetrated had to get past a newsdesk, sub editor, chief sub editor, night editor and stone sub before it reached the paper and I, like many reporters before me, am grateful for their eternal vigilance.
Now, however the means of publication, or in the case of the retweet, re-publication, has been out in the hands of everyone. Anyone can distribute their thoughts to the multitude, in subbed, as fresh as the moment they had them. Much of it is wonderful, some of it mundane and plenty of it actionable in law.
And the instantaneous nature of social media publication, I would argue, differentiates it for any form of publishing we have seen before. If you watch a young person going at their iPhone, you realise just how slow your own thumbs are and how quickly they can commit their thoughts to the ether. And this is my fundamental point, this is less like publication and more like thought. Many users of social media, especially Twitter, are simply thinking out loud, very loud.
Of course, one might argue, it is their own fault, they know the power of the retweet, they ought know their digital thoughts become permanent and searchable for all to discover. But the vilification of the likes of Paris Brown and the juror who didn’t like paedos simply tells people to keep their thoughts to themselves. It does not address the fact that they have those thoughts in the first place.
This is what social media is showing us, that there is an ugly side to people’s nature and before they would only express it to family, close friends and those who shared their views, now they are committing it to the Internet.
And is this what we want? I think yes, I would rather know what a juror thought about me, so he could be discharged, than him keep it a secret and find me guilty.
When Orwell wrote 1984 he envisaged cameras in every home spying on our every action. This is so much more than that, we don’t need the cameras, we have Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and more where people voluntarily sign up not only to record their actions but also their very thoughts.
The thought police are here, but they weren’t sent in by Big Brother, they are us.
This post originally appeared on the David Banks Media Consultancy blog and is reproduced with permission and thanks
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