Rodney King v. Los Angeles Police Department case
On the surface, this case is another unjust case, but the police were wronged, and the initiator was the news media. The American news media have always advocated objective and neutrality, and have taken the highest pursuit of revealing the truth of the facts as their profession. Among them, judicial news emphasizes the facts as their life. However, due to the limitations of subjective and objective factors, news reports cannot actually include all the details of the truth. They can only approach the facts, or they can only be a selective fact.
The protagonist of the case, Jin Ben, is a super strong black man. He was sentenced to jail for robbery. After parole, he promised not to drink and cause trouble. However, he could not withstand the temptation of his friends. After being drunk together, he was on the highway at a speed of 185 kilometers. After being discovered by the police, he still rushed around after several warnings. Finally, he stopped his car under the encirclement of more than 20 police cars and police helicopters. But this man was tall and strong, and knocked four white police officers to the ground one after another. Even the high-voltage electric batons did not have much effect on him. The four police officers then pulled out the police officers to beat him up and finally subdued him. Judging from the process of this case, the main fault lies in Jin. The police should not be the least of all, even if they beat Kim up after uniform.
But coincidentally, a famous photography enthusiast only took a scene where the police officer beat Jin. After this video was exposed and edited, it was reported that four white policemen beat black people together. In this way, an ordinary case of drunk driving resisting arrest turned into a racial violence incident. For more than a year, the video footage of four policemen brutally beating Rodney King was repeatedly broadcast by ABC, NBC, CBS and CBS, and has been deeply imprinted in the American minds. Polls show that 92% of viewers who have watched TV videos believe white police are guilty. There are not many Americans who really know the truth, and they didn't even know the president at the beginning. The city of Los Angeles triggered a major black riot. Under the interference of the government represented by President Bush, two of the police were eventually found guilty and were not only sent to jail, but also sentenced to huge fines.
In this way, a police officer's excessive law enforcement incident caused by speeding and drinking to resist arrest by parole criminals, has turned into a global shocking human rights abuse incident caused by white police to beat unarmed, kind and innocent black people for no reason. Four white police officers were immediately arrested and custody. With the help of prosecutors, Rodney King took advantage of the situation to sue the Los Angeles Police Department for criminal offenses and demanded personal injury compensation of $56 million in subsequent civil compensation lawsuits. There were 56 batons in the video, with an average of $1 million worth of each baton. It should be mentioned in particular that before the court made an independent verdict on this criminal case, the news media had actually made presumptions of guilt and guilty verdicts against the police with cut television pictures, resulting in the vast majority of people who had already found the police involved in the case to be extremely guilty and could not escape the blame before the trial, laying a time bomb for the riots that occurred after the trial, and eventually leading to the most heavy urban riot in American history.
The reason why the King was beaten to trigger the Los Angeles riot was extremely complicated: the economic globalization of the United States led to a large number of black working class in metropolitan areas being "laid off" and unemployed, losing basic living security; Reagan's major cuts in welfare plans during his administration, resulting in a vicious development of a huge gap between the rich and the poor; black poor communities have been neglected for a long time, and the crime rate remains high; the judicial system has many drawbacks, and police violations of law enforcement and abuse of power are extremely common. However, an important reason that cannot be ignored is that the news media calls for the wind and rain, creates momentum, misleading the public with deleted videos and "judicial news" that deviates from the truth, and in a sense directs this unprecedented urban riot. Jin himself combines criminals, suspects who refuse to arrest and victims of violence, which fully reflects the complexity and multifaceted nature of racial conflicts and democratic systems in American society.
So the question is: American news media have always advocated the pursuit of facts and truth, among which judicial news emphasizes that facts are life. In this case, why does KTITV use "judicial news" that deviate from the truth to mislead the public? This issue is quite complicated. First, due to the limitations of various subjective and objective factors, news reports cannot actually include all the details of the truth. They can only approach the facts, or they can only be a selective fact. Second, in a highly commercial society like the United States, the criteria for mass media to select news usually have a serious market-oriented trend. In order to increase ratings and defeat opponents in fierce competition, the news media attaches great importance to the stimulation and drama of news, and exaggerates the detailed reports of some news that have "market value". Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what news is, and it doesn’t matter what serious consequences it will bring. Only by winning readers or audiences with sensational exclusive news is the top priority. Taking the King case as an example, it is not great news for the police to beat a parole criminal who refuses to arrest, and only the white policeman who brutally beat an innocent black man for no reason will become the top news.
In a democratic society, the purpose of the rule of law is to prevent rulers and law enforcement officers from being lawless and doing evil, and it is by no means punishing the common people who violate the criminal law with severe and harsh laws. Government law enforcement officials have always been one of the key supervision targets of the news media. So, will KTSA TV station delete the original video without authorization and report the one-sided report on the Jin beating case? Will it cause legal trouble? Generally speaking, it won't. In American society, the news media is called the "Fourth Power" independent of the President, Congress and the Supreme Court. It is a special industry in all walks of life in the United States that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Therefore, KTLA TV station is natural and naturally has the power to cut and edit any original video. Although the deleted video failed to report the beatings in a comprehensive and objective manner, which constituted a certain degree of false accusation and slander for the police, according to the 1964 case of the New York Times v. Sullivan in the Federal Supreme Court, the premise for government officials to win such defamation lawsuits is to prove that the media's reports were "real malice", which made it extremely unlikely that public officials would win such lawsuits. In addition, all propaganda tools are in the hands of private news media, so government administration departments and police are basically helpless in the one-sided reporting of the media.
In the summer of 2000, Professor Ren Donglai from Nanjing University-Hopkins University Sino-US Cultural Center was invited to visit the headquarters of the Locke Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and he deliberately exchanged views with Deputy Director of the Police Department on the issue of the removal of the Golden Case video. Gascon replied frankly that the police department had no other way to do anything about the TV station's actions except angry and complaining.
Due to the criticism of the news media, the news made a big splash, which caused the Jin case to be full of storms before it was tried. In American society, the extensive reporting of judicial activities by the news media is a powerful supervisory force for the judicial process and judicial power. It should be said that the in-depth reporting and public opinion supervision of judicial cases by mass media have played an invaluable important role in increasing judicial transparency, supervising judges' judgments, improving the quality of court trials, promoting judicial fairness, exposing judicial corruption, and cultivating citizens' legal concepts and procedural awareness.
However, a problem that cannot be ignored is that although mainstream media claim to be objective and fair, they are actually still affected by different interest backgrounds and value orientations. When the court is surrounded by the hustle and bustle of public opinion aroused by the media, strong public opinion may put huge external pressure on fair trials, causing court trials to lose fairness and independence. It is precisely because of this danger that even in the United States, which advocates press freedom, courts and judges have always been extremely vigilant and wary of the news media in order to maintain judicial independence and due process principles.The famous Justice Holmes (Jr., 1902-1932) is famous for not reading newspapers. To prevent the media from affecting the independent judgment of the jury, Supreme Court Justice Clark (1949-1967) pointed out in Sheppard v. Maxwell (1966) in 1966: "In view of the incitement ability of modern communication media and the difficulty of isolating tendency of news reports, the trial court should take favorable measures to ensure that the balance of law will not be detrimental to the defendant." Judge Clark ruled: "Insulating the jury from the outside is also a measure that this judge should take based on the advice of the defense lawyer. If the trial activity is reported publicly, there may be If it is unfair, a retrial should be ordered. "
In order to prevent the news media from interfering in the independent court trial, US law stipulates that the media can only describe court activities in words, and recording and live broadcasting of court trials is generally prohibited. Therefore, when reporting on court activities by the three major TV networks and CNN, the picture provided can only be sketches provided by court sketchers. In addition, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Black (Justice 1937-1971) famously said: "Free speech and fair trial are the two most precious things in our civilization, and it is really difficult to choose between the two." The many problems reflected in the Rodney King's beating are a true portrayal of this dilemma.
Excerpted from "The Constitutional History of the United States: 25 Judicial Cases Influenced by the United States" in Rodney King v. Los Angeles Police Department case
