January 24, 2006

Law In Media

In case you don't read Drew's blawg normally, well you should. But here's something specifically that you should check out. I'm sure this is true of any technical profession that gets covered by the media, but I'm particularly aware of how poorly the media covers legal issues. Now, like Drew I don't feel like I know everything I would need to in order to make an informed decision about the sentence. My trouble with this situation is the widely held belief that disliking the outcome of a case means that the case was decided incorrectly. In a system of fixed (or largely fixed) rules or laws you're going to get cases that don't sit well with your gut, but if you just go with your gut you're not going to produce any kind of cognizable rules. Needless to say, not everyone's got the same gut instincts, so I think we're better off sticking with a neutral set of rules, even if we don't always like or understand some of the outcomes.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good point about the media being bad with any technical profession. That's entirely true, and my dad has been bitching about science writing for ages.

But I think it might be worse with respect to law because, for whatever reason, law is something the media constantly talks about. Stories like this get coverage, and people like O'Reilly and Scarborough and Matthews and the rest of them talk about it. But they only ever give half the story.