What Are Jon Venable’s Chances Of A Fair Trial ?

 Media  No Responses »
Mar 072010
 

We have learned over the last week that one of the killers of James Bulger, Jon Venables has had his license revoked, and is now back in prison. Of course there has been frantic speculation in the media about the reason for this, varying from drunkenness to a fight at work. It is of course worth pointing out that someone released on license from prison most commonly from a life sentence, is not free in the ordinary sense of the word as they can be re-imprisoned at the drop of a hat.

However this weekend, the real reason has slowly slipped out thanks to the circulation wars between newspapers. First he was accused of a “serious sexual crime” and now he has apparently been accused of some kind of child pornography offence. Of course we do not actually know that he is accused of this; we merely have a newspaper claiming it is so.

And a very irresponsible claim it is too – the newspaper editors involved obviously think that the popularity of their newspapers is more important than the safety of Jon Venables or the safety of anybody accused of child pornography offences. Plus of course it risks prejudicing those who might be called to act as a jury in their trial.

But who cares if Jon Venables gets a fair trial ? Or some child pornographer gets knifed in prison awaiting trial ?

Well in the later case, you could find yourself in prison awaiting trial on child pornography charges merely for letting your Windows machine get infected with a virus! The technical details of this are not of much interest here, but rest assured that if you let your machine get infected, those who control the virus can use your computer for whatever they want, which does include storing a stash of child porn. As certain unfortunate individuals have found to their cost.

Does Jon Venables deserve to be lynched for what he has done ? Well before we answer that, which crime are we talking about ? His childhood killing of James Bulger ? Or for his alleged crime of looking at child porn ? Well there are plenty who say he deserves it for his earlier crime, but he has been punished for that – perhaps you do not agree that the punishment is sufficient, but he has been punished and the punishment is probably more severe than most people realise.

He isn’t free. Don’t forget that.

He may be able to walk the streets and work for his living, but he isn’t free.

Being released on license means that he can be snatched back into prison on the flimsiest of pretexts – getting a little too involved in alcohol, perhaps getting into a fight, or even his parole officer doesn’t like his state of mind.

So he doesn’t deserve any additional punishment for his killing of James Bulger. Don’t forget that killing him would simply end his punishment; letting him live lets the punishment go on and on.

As for the alleged child pornography charge, he’s innocent of that and he will be until such time as a jury finds him guilty. And if he is found guilty ? If that happens he should be punished according to the law with no harsher or more lenient sentence than anyone else in the same circumstances. Which doesn’t include lynching.

Perhaps you do not agree, but you could well agree that the media is responsible for releasing enough details about Jon Venables to make it a little easier for those who want to kill him. It may also be enough to make it difficult for any trial of Jon Venables to be fair – every jury looking at a child pornography case may well wonder if the accused is Jon; in fact there could be any number of possibly unfair trials due to come up.

Is this right ? Does the public right to know or the public interest include possibly putting someone’s life at risk ? Or indeed risking an innocent person (and not necessarily Jon Venables) from being convicted of possessing child pornography ?

Under US law, there is the concept of ‘reckless endangerment’ whereby anyone who puts another at risk of harm is subject to possible prosecution. To me that sounds an awful lot like what the British media is currently doing to Jon Venables. I certainly believe that what they are doing is potentially dangerous not only to Jon Venables, but to others too – who can forget the Portsmouth residents trying to lynch an innocent person because he had the same name as a paedophile?

For nothing more than increased circulation, the newspapers are cynically willing to put someone’s life at risk. Perhaps we need an equivalent of “reckless endangerment” and stick a few editors behind bars to put across the point that someone’s life is worth more than any amount of money.

The Future Of Printed Newspapers

 Computing, Media  No Responses »
Dec 282009
 

There seems to be an impression amongst fans of digital media that printed newspapers are on the slow decline on the way to oblivion, and they could well be right. Without some radical changes, printed newspapers could be going the way of the town crier – around only as a historical oddity.

But what about radical change ? There are certainly possibilities there. The key is to look at the weaknesses of digital news :-

  1. Authority. Whilst some digital media news sources have some credibility, much of the time when you bump across some random blogger (like me!), you will have no idea on how credible they are – do they know what they are talking about ? I certainly don’t!
  2. Location. There are zillions (well a large number anyway) of places you can find digital news and it can take time to look for the news you are interested in. That is fine for a number of specialised areas – for instance my job includes an unwritten requirement to keep up to speed with what is happening in the IT industry, so I’ll spend a few hours a week searching. But for something less important to me – such as general European news, I’ll pass.
  3. Photography. Funnily enough given the quality of photo printing in most newspapers, this actually a weakness of digital news – whilst they all do photographs, they don’t do them well. Some of the most dramatic moments in history have had their stories told in newspapers with just a photo printed large. This does not happen often, but when it does it is a very powerful way of telling a news story (or starting off the story).
  4. You can’t read digital media in the bath. In the past, Sundays would often include a period of an hour or two sitting quietly reading the newspaper; whilst we can do that on the computer screen, this is rarely as relaxing as reading in the bath, at a quiet spot in the garden (or the local park), etc.

But what are the weaknesses of the printed newspaper ? Here we also have many :-

  1. You pay for the whole paper. Out of an ordinary newspaper, I am probably interested in at most 50% of it, and it seems rather irritating paying for that sports journalist who puts in some long story about a hockey tournament that I have never heard of, do not care about, and will not take the time to read even if you pay me for it. On the other hand, I might be interested in some random articles on things I would otherwise not read – for instance I am completely uninterested in car reviews, but there has been a recent review of a car “made” by Top Gear that I wouldn’t mind reading (for humour if nothing else).
  2. If you are lucky the newspaper you buy was put together by an editor whose interests closely match your own. Far more likely however is that there are news stories that did not get in (because you have “oddball” interests) because they are not seen as popular. I want to see news stories on what is happening in Europe, and local interest stories for Portsmouth, Winchester, Bangkok, and Sangüesa – a rather eclectic set of locations it may seem, but what they really are is individual.
  3. The quality of news photograph prints needs to be improved on. If you can print fashion photographs in a supplement properly why cannot the news stories also be printed properly ? Maybe that would cost more but I for one would be willing to pay extra for it.
  4. Some people want a daily newspaper and some want a weekly one. Actually some of us probably want a newspaper on some Sundays.

What we are looking at here is a newspaper suited to the individual requirements. Conventional newspaper printing and distribution won’t cope with that, but that does not mean it is impossible to provide. After all we have printing on demand for books, so why not newspapers ?

What I envisage is a web site where you start off by choosing something very conventional … “I want a copy of the Sunday Times delivered every Sunday”. From this unpromising start (and a start that is probably more expensive than the current way of getting the Sunday Times), you can add customisations :-

  • Print on quality paper for extra cost.
  • Remove any articles relating to Sport.
  • Add articles relating to this set of locations.
  • Add articles relating to IT, astrophysics, and archaeology.
  • Reset the formatting to use body text font as “Liberation Serif” at 12 points, headlines as “Verdana” at 14 points, and make the pages four columns wide.

From there, you could add additional customisations to the point where the newspaper has little or no relation to the real world “Sunday Times”. Whilst the default preference would be to pay for a printed copy, you could opt for downloading a PDF (or any other suitable eBook format) at a cheaper cost if you wished.

I am sure that if some newspaper magnate were to read this, they would think “hell no, that’s just too expensive” or some other reason for not doing it. That is probably more an indication that their imagination is too limited.