David Bain: The media role and public opinion

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10831541

The above from the Herald shows the apparent 'public opinion' split as to whether David should be paid compensation. A relatively fruitless exercise in that as the article points out that the decision is not a public one but rather one for Cabinet.

National MP Michael Woodhouse says 'Only Cabinet can make the decision. I don't think public opinion should enter into it.' Similarly MP Clare Curran said that Cabinet needed to consider the opinion of the judge whose advice it had sought. Pleased to read the MPs exercising the correct objectivity but struck by the irony that much has been done to agitate public opinion in this case, unfortunately some of it from the pen of van beynan attended by gaps which left out important material and in other instances exaggerated or misrepresented facts.

Whether known to van beynan or not, some of that material went to the hate-sites and later to message boards though out nz. The owners of the hate-sites and members claimed contact with vb and quoted his material at length, in particular his award winning opinion piece in which he wrote of having sat through almost the entire 2nd trial but in which he neglected most of the basic evidence against Robin even to the point of ignoring that Robin's dna was found inside the rifle as represented by the last person being shot, and therefore having been shot with a close contact would consistent with suicide. Fairly dramatic evidence to be left out of an 'important' piece of writing. Why was it left out, who knows? But it did the target of vb's campaign, David, no good as we now consider his innocence.

I wonder if vb had accurately reported such things whether some of those now charged with defamation etc would have 'acted out' as a result of not knowing such critical information. Additionally, the fact that David was strip searched and found to have no 'infamous' scratches on his chest is also something that the professed media expert of the Bain killings seems to have also omitted. The result of that is the frantic claims 'David had scratches on his chest that must have come from the fight with Stephen.' Something not true, and something which vb never sought to rectify. vb also decided not to tell the public about the blood wash on Robin's palms, critical evidence which put smeared blood on Robin's hands before he died.

So on the one hand we have MPs rightfully telling us today that the compensation will be decided by Cabinet and not by public opinion while on the other we see a journalist free to write 'factually' in a way that misleads the public and causes disquiet about the whole legal system. Not to forget that vb even went after the Jury and was warned to stay away from them by police. We all want freedom of speech but isn't freedom of speech attended by the expectation of truth and not be used wrongfully to generate hate against an individual or individuals or against a Justice System under pressure as having been complicit in an 'actual Miscarriage of Justice.'

Do we have a situation in NZ where an under fire police force have 'helpers' among the media who omit important information and willingly misrepresent the truth in order to enhance a failed police case, perhaps in return for favours, story breaks, money? That's for a reader to decide in this case. However, in the broader picture what are the terms which hold no one to account for deliberately campaigning against a person using omissions or exaggerations? In the case of vb it seems nothing. In fact he was given an award for an opinion piece of which those that voted on the award either didn't care or didn't know was an unbalanced, biased piece of writing - is that too in the reward system?

What is going on in our self-policed media? How is it that our self-policed media can get things so wrong that they give awards for persecution style articles without balance. Not only that, but how is it that a reporter can deliberately harass jurors and not be charged by the organisation who could appear most likely to benefit from his biased writing and unlawful approach to jurors. These are not single isolated threads but rather a campaign. It wasn't one written piece that used omissions and exaggerations always to the detriment of David but many pieces, consistently not telling the full story and using terms such as 'covered in blood,' 'scratches on his chest.'

There is more on this for a later time, In the meantime as 'co-incidences' go how often would it be that a prize winning writer took an approach of inflamation of public opinion in not one case but two. All the steps of vb in his efforts against David and Peter Ellis, two innocent men, he has underlined his own efforts either with pride or a complete vindictive disdain for the hurt he has caused.

From yesterday's news we learnt that 2 Dunedin police central to the Bain injustice had been interviewed for 6 hours I wonder if Ian Binnie paid regard to the public interest in how we see the media work constructively to persecute two innocent men in cases where the police have delivered an 'actual Miscarriage of Justice' to one man proven, and a second proven in the public mind. To quote Karam - 'more dust to settle.'