NCJ Number
176100
Editor(s)
L, Jr Chiasson
Date Published
1997
Length
238 pages
Annotation
This book tells the stories of 16 significant trials in American history and their media coverage, from the Zenger trial in 1735 to the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995; each essay relates the history of events leading up to the trial, the people involved, and how the crimes and subsequent trials were reported.
Abstract
In chronological order, the trials include colonial printer John Peter Zenger in 1735; the murder trials associated with what became known as the Boston Massacre in 1770; the murder trial of abolitionist John Brown in 1859; the trial of those charged with the Haymarket riot in 1886; the trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and stepmother in 1892; the trial of Harry K. Thaw for the murder of well-known architect Stanford White; the bizarre trial of several of the Chicago Black Sox baseball players in 1921; the 1925 "monkey" trial of John Thomas Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee school; the numerous trials of the Scottsboro boys for rape; the 1935 trial of Bruno Hauptmann for kidnapping and murdering the child of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh; the espionage and perjury trial of Alger Hiss in 1949-50 and the trial of the Rosenbergs for wartime espionage soon after; the trial in 1969 for conspiracy to incite violence by the anti-establishment "radicals" known as the Chicago Seven; the 1970 murder trial of Charles Manson; the military trial that same year of Lieutenant William Calley for premeditated murder of villagers in My Lai, Vietnam; and the most publicized trial in American History, the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995. The editors argue in their concluding paper that from a social responsibility perspective, press coverage of trials is little more than a distraction from weightier matters of civic responsibility; but in market-driven journalism, the media must give the public what it wants rather than what it needs. Thus, the media attention to these trials makes them cultural events that reflect public needs and attitudes at the time; thus, they touch a tender nerve in the public psyche. Chapter notes and a 140-item selected bibliography