The Impact of Pre-trial Reporting of Cases on the Public's Perception of Justice in Kenya

Abstract

It is usually intriguing to follow trial of cases in the media to their conclusion. The impression usually given by the press tends to be contradictory to the actual judgment passed at the finalization of the trial. At times this creates an impression of miscarriage of justice. The study set out to investigate the part played by the press on the public's understanding of justice and set to establish whether the public sees that justice is not only done, but is also seen to be done by the time the cases they have been following in the newspapers are concluded in the courts. The secondary objectives were to establish whether journalist are able and willing to accurately and professionally capture the facts and the law in their reporting cases to the public and also to find out if journalists understand the legal interpretation of their reporting cases to the public. The study used a descriptive survey research design. Arising from the objectives of the study, the two major category groups were of interest the general public and the journalists. On the part of the general public, data was collected from diverse populace of Nairobi purposively sampled. There were one hundred and twenty people selected as the sample. The sample was asked to fill questionnaires which were picked up later. The theoretical framework behind the study was the impact of mass media on the society and the media agenda setting role in the society. The theoretical framework was drawn from Severin & Tankard's (1997) old time discussion on the media effect on the society alongside Smith's propositions (1992) that mass media extend the message but inevitably distort the message. 22 Abstracts The data collected showed that the members of the public do get significantly influenced by the cases they read in the newspaper and in particular in their perception, interpretation and the process of justice. In addition the study showed that the members of public are influenced by the print media in their perception as to whether the cases they followed in the newspapers are fairly concluded. The other findings drawn from the study were that journalists have shortcomings in reporting cases due to the technical nature of the legal process. The findings further showed that most journalists are not pro-active in building their capacity in legal journalism. The findings also show that journalist did not fully understand the legal language in their reporting of cases.