NCJ Number
178777
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 16 Issue: 3 Dated: September 1999 Pages: 601-631
Date Published
1999
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This article examines the effect of massive media coverage on a judicial system.
Abstract
The article analyzes 3,453 felony cases tried over a 10-year period. The cases span 5 years preceding and 5 years following two highly publicized day-care child abuse trials in Miami, Florida. Significant case-processing shifts provide evidence of coverage “echo” effects, whose existence had been hypothesized in the literature but had not been established empirically. High-profile case publicity echoes were thought to reverberate through judicial systems and to condition them to process similarly charged but nonpublicized cases differently than they would have been processed otherwise. Because they affect nonpublicized low-profile cases, news media echoes can expand the effects of news coverage on the judicial system far beyond single high-profile cases. Although this study found a significant echo, it did not extend to all possible processing effects. The article suggests the need for empirical studies of other media echoes in other jurisdictions. Notes, figures, tables, references